The Whispers in the Darkness
by howponderous
Summary: Recently, a new Horror VRMMO has come along and it is assumed that its causing those who play it to go insane, and has trapped Kirito and company inside of it. The story follows Justin, who entered the VRMMO completely unaware of all of this. I would really appreciate any and all reviews, no matter their contents.
1. Chapter 1 - Character Creation

_It seems that despite the SAO incident, the continued success of Virtual Reality MMO's seems unstoppable, with games such as Gun Gale Online completely smashing any and all previous records for videogame player numbers. Thanks to the insane demand, there has been an ever increasing supply of these games, and it was only a matter of time before someone who sympathized with Kayaba Akihiko appeared. _

_On August 2028, Team Silent (the creators of the popular video game series Silent Hill) banded together once again to create their very own VRMMO that was set to evoke a tone similar as similar to the Silent Hill franchise as possible. This particular VRMMO was called 'The Whispers in the Darkness', and at first received extremely positive reception and sales, becoming the most pre ordered game of all time. However, this honeymoon period died down as the months progressed, and it was soon noted that after the game was released there was a sudden increase in the amount of people admitted to hospitals with psychological disorders. After some research was conducted, it was soon discovered that most of these new patients had played a significant amount of 'The Whispers in the Darkness', which caused significant concern among the few that knew of these results, however due to the lack of hard evidence, it has not been brought to the mainstream media's attention._

_With the mental disorder trend continuing, the Government needed information. So they sent someone who had survived the SAO incident named Kirito to observe was happening in the game. Kirito took a few friends into the VRMMO with him (these friends were called Asada Shino, Yuuki Asuna, Shinozaki Rika and Tsuboi Ryoutarou). However no one from this group of 5 has logged out of TWD, and no one has seen them in game for a worryingly long period of time either. To make matters even more unsettling, if their Amuspheres are removed then they remain in a comatose state, as if they are still trapped in the VRMMO world. Not only that but over time their heart rate begins to slow down, and won't return to normal speed unless their Amushpere is over their heads, and activated again. This means that the group's loved ones can do nothing but simply sit there, and hope for they day when they log out._

_It is now August 2029, approximately a year since 'The Whispers in the Dark' was first released and despite the rumours circling about the games tendency to cause the destruction of people's mental health, it was still selling like crazy. It was at this time that Justin Ballard, a fourth year university student studying for his psychology major decided it was time to finally try that latest horror VRMMO._

Justin walked into his small, three room apartment. He threw his bag on the ground and quickly rushed over to his Amusphere, that seemed to be eagerly waiting for him on his bed. Justin smirked, he had been delaying playing this game for far too long, and had been purposely avoiding almost all news about the game, to simply avoid spoilers. Now that his assignments and exams were over for the next few months, he had more than enough time to make up for all of this lost time, and conqueror the 'The Whispers in the Darkness' world. Justin sat onto his bed, and put his Amusphere over his head. He fell onto his back and said "Amusphere, on." and the Amusphere lit up in a sudden flash of light, and sent Justin's conscious away to the vast realm of the internet.

When Justin opened his eyes, there was in a large black void and a large amount of text in front of him. He softly read the text out loud "Hello citizen, welcome to 1929 Chicago. The Great War is over, and with the horrific images of that event fresh in everyone's minds, people were simply trying to have fun and enjoy a post war life, despite the ever worsening economy. However, a year ago something horrifying seemingly arose from the ground, and ever since the human population has dwindled to a shadow of its former self. No one knows what happened, because anyone who had seen the event that started this disaster has gone clinically insane, or were killed by the creature. Now the Earth is crying out for a savior, will anyone be able to answer its cries."

When Justin finished reading he smirked and said "Pffft, this is an MMO. I doubt anyone will be saving this world, because then the whole game would be kinda pointless." The words suddenly faded and were replaced by a button that said "SELECT YOUR PROFESSION". Justin had heard of this feature, it was a sort of substitute for a class system where certain profession are better at certain skills, and there are missions you can't do unless you are of a certain profession or you have a person with the required profession in your party. Justin clicked the button, and a huge array of professions appeared on the screen, from doctor to librarian. Justin clicked on the doctor option, and a large screen popped up with information on the bonuses you get from this class, the mission types you get for this class, the starting items you receive from this class and the amount of other players with this class.

Justin pressed the back button, and quickly scanned over all of the available professions until he found one that he liked. "Hmmmm, Private Eye uh. Sounds interesting." Justin pressed the private eye option, and a large screen popped up. He read it quickly, and summarized that this profession gives you stealth, information gathering, light gun and sleight of hand abilities. You start with a trench-coat, a knife, a pistol and a pair of handcuffs. Your jobs as a private eye requires crime solving, so it is recommended a lot of critical thinking is required. Justin looked at the right hand corner, and saw that there was an incredibly small amount of private eyes when compared to doctors. Justin smirked and said "Well a class no one else uses that's stealth based, that's exactly my style." and pressed the 'ACCEPT' button. As he pressed it a pop up appeared and said 'WARNING, THIS CLASS REQUIRES TERTIARY EDUCATION AND SOME EXPERIENCE IN THE FIELD OF PSYCHOLOGY OR FORENSIC SCIENCE TO BE PLAYED OPTIMALLY, ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO TAKE THIS CLASS.' Justin rolled his eyes and pressed the 'YES' button.

The screen then faded away, and was replaced with a large mirror and a character customization screen. He saw his reflection in that mirror, and it mimicked everything he did. He reached over towards the left, and pressed the hair option. He pressed next, and suddenly his hair in the mirror changed from its usual untidy self, to a shaven look. "So, that's how this works." Justin said.

Justin altered his image's appearance until it was now 190cms, had short and black hair with a slightly unshaven face. He altered his voice, to make it significantly more rough, deep and husky. He made himself slightly more muscled, made his skin a slightly darker tone, gave himself dark blue eyes and made himself look a little more aged, so instead of 23 he looked about 30. He then pressed the confirm button and suddenly his image's t-shirt and shorts were suddenly switched with a black pair of jeans, a white shirt, a red tie, a black vest and a brown trench-coat. He was then given a pop up which asked 'ARE YOU HAPPY WITH THIS APPEARANCE?' Justin accepted, and then image in the mirror jumped out, and seemed to engulf Justin and it caused him to black out as he was injected into the game world of 'The Whisper's in the Darkness.'


	2. Chapter 2 - The Wrong Way

Justin slowly opened his eyes to see a rather weird looking, dark purple sky. He felt some minor, niggling pains all over his body as he slowly sat up. He looked around to see what looked like a slightly destroyed and old fashion looking Chicago. The buildings seemed to be cracked, and a lot of them were paritally sunken into the ground. He was about to stand up when another black box appeared and said "THE NEXT THING YOU SAY SHALL BE YOUR NAME." Justin thought about what name to use for a second, before he shrugged his shoulders and decided to use his usual name for these sorts of things. "Justin Credible." he said smiling at his stupid pun based name. The black box then disappeared, which allowed Justin to stand up fully. After looking around briefly, he saw a large amount of unconscious people falling from the sky behind him. "So that's how everyone spawns in." Justin muttered. He saw a lot of people heading North, so he shrugged his shoulders and decided to go South, because he liked to do things his own way.

Justin soon found himself outside of the large city, and onto a field of dead grass, that was full of fissures in the ground. After a brief period of walking, some strange fog started to form around him, slightly restricting his field of vision. The further he walked away, the thicker the smog was, restricting a lot of Justin's vision. The thought of turning around did cross Justin's mind, however he decided not to, it was only a VRMMO, and there was no reports of people dying thanks to this game unlike in SAO so he didn't care even if he did die. Justin also enjoyed experimenting, and had a feeling that there would be something awesome for those who are adventurous enough to leave the spawn city immediately.

Justin looked to the left suddenly when he heard a weird sounding cackle of laughter. There was something about that laugh that just seemed to send shivers through his entire spine. Justin saw the shadows in the distance move around quickly. He reached into his coat, and pulled his handgun out of its holder, prepared himself so that he was ready to fire. He heard the breaking and crumpling of leaves all around him, like he was being surrounded by small creatures in the fog. "Crap crap crap crap." Justin said, looking around quickly. All of a sudden, he heard a shrill scream, and saw a shadowy humanoid figure sprinting towards him. He pointed his gun at the figure, and was preparing himself to fire until he saw that it was a human.

Justin lowered his gun and this girl with read hair ran up to him and hugged him. She was squeezing him uncomfortably tightly, and was blubbering all over him. He looked to see a name above her head, that name being Jessica Corps, and saw the number 23 next to her name. "A-are you ok?" Justin asked puzzled.

Jessica looked up at him and said "T-they're coming. We tried to stop them, but now we're all dead."

Justin shook his head and said "Calm down, its only a video game."

Jessica looked at Justin's name and opened her eyes in shock when she saw his level. "Y-you're only lvl 1. WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!" and she started screaming, like a deranged mad women.

Justin just looked at her puzzled, she seemed transfixed on his level, as if it was hypnotic or something. Justin shook his head and said "Look, I may be a low level but we can get out of here if you want."

Jessica just shook her head, and she whispered "N-no more. I can't take it." and pulled a gun out from her pocket, aimed it at her head and shot it right in front of Justin, causing blood to splatter all over him.

"JESUS CHRIST!" Justin said, as he felt the warm blood splatter all over him, and run down his face. He saw Jessica collapse, and her lifeless body just started bleeding rapidly. Justin heard a deep, almost unnatural laughter behind him, and he turned around quickly, to see a shadow fade into the fog. Justin gulped and said "Bugger this." obviously unnerved from the sight of someone shooting themselves in front of him. He started to run back to where he assumed the spawn location was, going as fast as humanly possible.

After a long amount of running his body was hurting and he was struggling to maintain his pace. He wanted nothing more than to stop, however he quickly looked to the left, to see a shadow running alongside him, which just made him pick up the pace. These shadows however did nothing but match Justin's speed, which just made him worried. Justin however soon realized something, that the fog he was in was yet to clear in the slightest, even though it by rights should be. Justin suddenly tripped over something, which caused him to fall flat on his face. He picked himself up a little and saw what he had tripped over, it was Jessica, but now here stomach was completely ripped open, as if something had been eating her. Justin stood up, and saw that he was right next to a tree, with corpses hanging off its branches via ropes on their necks.

Justin was panting heavily as he pulled out his gun once more, he was afraid. All thoughts about how this was a game had completely slipped from his mind, and as far as he was concerned he was fighting for his life. "C-come out." Justin weakly commanded, his voice was weak and his body was shaking.

A dark and deep voice from the shadows laughed ominously, and said "Ok sir, if you insist."

Justin gulped as a tall, dark shadow slowly walked towards him. Soon the figure revealed itself to be a large, overweight looking green humanoid with a horrifying face that seemed to be a mixture of a human's and a zebra's, and his hair seemed to be seaweed. Apart from his face, he looked almost exactly like a human, except his right hand seemed to be made entirely out of tentacles. It smiled a devilish smile that sent shiver's down Justin's spine. Then two, small black goblin looking creatures came out of the fog, and stopped at the abominations feet. "W-what the fuck are you?" Justin asked.

"I am your doom." The abomination said in a deep voice, before Justin shouted and unloaded a clip of bullets into the behemoth and the goblins next to it. Justin successfully managed to kill the goblins, but his bullets just seemed to bounce off the behemoth. It continued to smile as it said "You think some with no gun skills could even damage me?" before he reached his right tentacle arm up, and they extended, completely wrapping Justin in them. Justin struggled to break free, but he couldn't, the abomination was far too strong. "Bye Bye." he said, and tightened his grip on Justin, which sent a jolt of unbelievable pain through his body as he was crushed. Suddenly a black screen appeared that asked 'DO YOU WISH TO RESPAWN?' With pain coursing through his body Justin immediately pressed the no button, so a second screen came up and said "IT IS NOT RECOMMENDED TO LOG OFF IMMEDIATELY AFTER DEATH. DO YOU WISH TO LOG OFF ANYWAY?" Justin didn't care about what the game recommended, he just wanted the pain to stop, so he pressed yes.

...

In the real world Justin suddenly regain consciousness and ripped his Amusphere off his head and threw it to the ground. He was panting, sweating and shaking and his body was screaming in agony. Justin quickly ran to the corner, and curled himself up into a ball, obviously traumatized from dying like that.


	3. Chapter 3 - Back in the Saddle

Justin looked at the party going on from his window. It was a huge gathering, full of people, alcohol, drugs, loud noises and fireworks. Nothing could possibly have seemed less inviting to someone like him, he just found all of those sorts of activities beneath him. He shook his head, and plonked himself in front of his computer. It had been three days since he died in 'The Whispers in the Darkness' and he was still mentally recovering from the experience, but he was currently a lot more mentally sound then he was when he first took the Amushpere off. He spent the entirety of that night simply sobbing to himself, as his body ached and his mind began to hallucinate. At that point he didn't even have proper control over his body, it was as if his conscious thought that his body had actually been crushed. It took 12 hours of crying, hallucinating and struggling to move before he had proper control over his body, and could baseline function again.

A day after he died, he decided it would be best to do some research on the game and he quickly learnt a few fascinating pieces of information. First of all the game was set in an exact replica of America in the 1920s, save a few minor decors to sell the whole apocalypse angle. Secondly, this game prided itself on the fact that it had full on one to one pain sensors, meaning that if your avatar feels pain, your consciousness thinks it is in pain, and your body reacts accordingly. This means that any deaths are felt by the player, and any injuries carry on into real life. And thirdly, it seems that there is something known as a Sanity bar, which decreases when something horrifying is seen. And as sanity decreases, your mind forgets that it's a game, and begin to become convinced that everything that is happening in the VRMMO is real. Not only that but if the sanity bar reaches the bottom 25% you start acting irregularly. And when the sanity bar drops to zero, the mind is suddenly filled with an urge to commit suicide, which unlike normal deaths permanently kills your character, forcing you to restart the game from the start with a new character. This explains that girl's sudden suicidal reaction earlier. Sanity can be increased again by achieving quests, killing sanity decreasing monsters, taking drugs and interacting with other humans in the game. Also, everyone seems to have a different base sanity level, which at this point is assumed to be completely random.

Justin shook his head as he reached into the fridge underneath his PC, and pulled out a soft drink. He opened it up as a loud pop filled the room, and began greedily drinking the unhealthy liquid. He put his drink down and closed his eyes, he knew that he was going to return to that game again eventually, that was just how he did things. However he really didn't want to go back in, he didn't exactly enjoy the feeling of being crushed like that. Not only that but there was a growing conspiracy theory on the internet that the game was driving people towards insanity. Justin of course didn't believe any this for a second and just wrote it off as conspiracy nuts being conspiracy nuts. However he did admit that it unnerved him, and the coincidental evidence that they presented did seem to be rather in depth.

Justin just sighed and said "Fuck it." and picked his Amusphere off of his bench and walked over towards his bed. He plugged in his Amusphere and said "I hope I don't regret this." as he put the headgear over his head, and lay down onto his back. "Amusphere on." and the large helmet clicked onto life and began glowing light blue, as Justin's body lost its conscious and it was teleported into cyberspace.

...

Justin opened his eyes slowly, to see that same suspicious looking purple sky above his head. He still couldn't believe that he was back here. He stood up slowly and opened up his inventory, and saw that his level was now 2, and he suddenly had weird items in his inventory called Goblin Eyes. He was puzzled, he had no idea how how he had leveled up and how he suddenly had those items in his inventory. Then suddenly, he remembered the moments before he died, where he killed the two things sitting at the legs of that tentacled abomination. "So, that makes sense." he muttered, in his new and much more gravely than usual voice.

Justin closed his inventory and decided it would be best to simply follow the herd of people that were migrating into the city rather than go it alone and get killed again. So he slowly walked into the center of the slightly destroyed city of Chicago. As he walked slowly along he looked around, and saw that the buildings all seemed to be slightly sinking into the ground and had cracks all over them, it was as if something had pushed all of the buildings into the ground.

As Justin followed the large herd he was led to a red building that seemed to have avoided most of the damage a lot of the city had suffered. He stopped in his tracks, unsure of what the building was actually for. He managed to stop one of the other commuters and he asked them "So, what is up with that building."

The guy he stopped just said "The Job Center, idiot." and continued to walk away immediately.

Justin remembered this building in his research, it was a low level player focused job center, where new players could form parties and could accept basic party jobs. It was perfect for newcomers to start their journey into the horrifying post apocalyptic world of 1920s America. Justin walked inside the large building, and saw a large gathering of people running around, shouting to each other about quests. As Justin walked into deeper into the building he noticed people staring at him, as if he was some rare kind of species. He was then approached by a guy in a blue button up shirt and was asked "A-are you a detective."

Justin nodded and said "Yeah why." And it was as if that basic utterance had signaled to that rapid crowd that he was giving away free money. The swarmed him like a pack of starving sharks would swarm a bleeding fish, begging him for help in their party. As it turned out, thanks to how notoriously hard being a private eye class was that low level ones were a rather hot commodity. Justin sighed as he was shouted at, and started debating with himself as to whether he was actually safer in here then out with the abomination again.


	4. Chapter 4 - Team Electric Moccasins

Justin stared at the group of 4 that had ensnared him. He had managed to slide out of the almost mob like crowd that was mauling him for job requests, and escaped out the back of the large red building. However as he was walking away he felt a hand on the back of his shoulders, which caused him to jump a little in front. He turned around and saw a grinning, slightly overweight man with a wild head of red hair and a red beard, and had a large cigar in his mouth. He was wearing a long sleeve white shirt, a pair of blue jeans and was wearing a blood stained apron. Justin looked at the man with a condescending look on his face and said "What do you want."

The overweight man pulled his cigar out of his mouth and crossed his arms, smiled and said "Well there lassy, yer dat new detective ain't ya."

Justin glanced around rapidly, the man had a very thick Scottish accent. Justin put his hand in his pockets and said "Ummmm, yeah I guess I am."

The man chuckled, and reached his free hand out to Justin's and said "Da name's Harold Hoggins imma butcha, whats yers?"

Justin hesitantly grabbed Harolds outstretched and said shook it, whilst he nervously said "Well, the name's Justin Credible."

Harold chuckled a little and said "Well, yer a bit of a joker ain't ya?"

Justin glanced to his left, he wasn't a jokster at all, with his name being one of 10 jokes he had ever successfully performed in front of people. He looked back at Harold and said "Well, not particularly."

Harold was still grinning as he tapped Justin on the shoulder and said "Oh, you're a modest one ain't ya." He pulled his arm back and crossed his arms again "Well lassy, whats say ya join me and ma group?"

Justin looked up at Harold's player name, and saw that he was lvl 17. "Ummmmm, ell if you haven't noticed I am 15 levels lower then you."

Harold shook his head and cheerily said "Dat's fine liddle man, dis job of ours is pretty basic. Besides, me and ma group will protect ya. Anyway dis will get cha a lodda levels."

Justin looked at him and said "You aren't gonna let me leave aren't you."

Harold chuckled for a rather brief moment and said "Well lassie, yer right. Cause I can just go an tell dem others in dat red buldin ova der dat yer here."

Justin sighed, the man had seen the mob attacking him, and he had now had a stranglehold over him. Justin nodded and said "Alright then, for one job only."

Harold smiled a huge, cheesy smile and said "Great news laddie, well let me take ye to me group." and her turned around, and started to walk off happily. Justin followed, he was already annoyed with this guys accent and how he spoke and wasn't looking forward to spending any significant amount of time with him.

After a long, silent and awkward walk the two made it to one of the smaller semi destroyed buildings. Harold knocked on the door loudly, and a butch looking black women in a tight, athletic outfit with very short hair opened the door. She glared at the two men, before she quickly flicked her head up, walked out of the doorway and pointed inside. Harold nodded and said "Aye, dats me lass." as he grabbed Justin's arm and pulled him inside.

Harold led Justin into the building, with the butch looking and dark skinned lady following the two. Harold dragged Justin into a large, circular room with a blackboard in the middle of it. In that same room there was another two people, who were muttering to each other at the other side of the building. Harold loudly shouted out "TEAM ELECTRIC MOCCASINS ASSEMBLE! WE HAVE A NEW MEMBER." The two on the left of the building looked at each other, and begrudgingly walked over to the center of the room and lined up in front of the blackboard with the butch lady. Justin and Harold walked in front of the three and Harold said "Go on son, introduce yerself."

Justin coughed and awkwardly introduced himself with "Hello... well ummmm my name is Justin Credible. And ummmm I guess I am a level 2 private eye."

The butch girl snarled and said "Harold you moron. Why the hell did you bring someone so green in our group."

Harold chuckled and said "Now now Tabby, he's da first private eye we haf eva seen, and he don't need to be a high level to do dis job." The butch lady called Tabby just snorted, and folded her arms. Harold looked back at Justin and said "Excellent work lad" Then he turned back to his group and shouted "ALRIGHT, IT TIME TO INTRODUCE YERSELVES TO OUR NEW TEAMMATE"

The butch looking doorman said "Well, my name is Tabitha Lockmer and I'm a level 14 Boxer."

Then a women petite looking woman with long, dark red hair in a nurses outfit to Tabitha's left said in a rather high pitched and ditzy sounding voice "Well, my name is Jasmine Archmen. And I am a level 16 doctor.""

Then a rather muscular man with an extremely smooth voice and very well groomed green hair started to slowly strip off his green button up shirt as he slowly explained "Well, my name is Archie Makaso. And I am a level 12 model." By the time he had finished his introduction his shirt was completely unbuttoned and was sliding off his back onto the ground.

Justin looked at the rather wacky looking group, and said "Why the hell am I even here?"

Harold looked back at him and said "Well cause ye accepted to join our guild."

Justin sighed and said "Yeah, I did do that didn't I."

After a prolonged period of awkwardness between Justin and the other members of the group, Harold decided it would be best to just go ahead and discuss what was actually happening, so he looked over at Archie and sad "Lad, explain to da new group da job."

Archie, who still had is shirt off nodded and walked over in front of the blackboard. "He flipped the blackboard to its other side, where a large amount of drawings and plans were scribbled onto it. He pointed at the blackboard and said "So it seems that on the outskirts of the Southeast Chicago district an old building as been taken over by goblins." Archie pointed directly at a drawing of some demonic looking beast, which Justin almost immediately recognized as the creepy things that were hanging around next to the legs of that behemoth that crushed him. He shuddered, thinking about that awful looking behemoth sent unsettling and disturbing thoughts through his head. Archie continued to explain the job with "And as it turns out, there have been an abundance of NPC's that have gone missing around the district. Therefore we have been enlisted to try and clear out the building, and rescue any remaining alive NPCs.

Jasmine spoke up and said "So, like what is the plan even going to be?"

Archie pointed at Jasmine and said "Great question. You see first I shall use my model skills in order to attract the attention of the surrounding goblins, and then run off leaving the base very under-guarded. After I run off, I shall enter a pre-planned trap area of sorts, and once I arrive there Harold and Tabby will jump out and shall start assaulting the goblins."

Harold loudly interrupted Archie by saying "Don't worry laddy, dem goblins won't hold a candle up to someone like me."

Archie looked at Harold and said "Rrrrrrrrright. Anyway after the fight Jasmine over there will heal any damaged caused to me and Harold." Archie paused and pointed at Justin before he said "Now that only leaves out stealth, investigative and psychoanalysis expert, Justin Credible. You see Justin whilst most of the goblins have been lured out you shall sneak into the building and stealthily exterminate all of the remaining Goblins, and shall release any and all NPCs that may still be alive. Once it is clear, we will all meet up, bring the guy who gave us this job to the site and then we will get our money. Not only that, but we can pocket whatever the Goblins have stashed away in their for ourselves. Now, any questions?"

Justin quickly glanced around the room, it seemed like on one had any objections to this plan, except for him. It seemed that his lack of skill or experience was yet to be accounted for in their little plan, and it seemed a lot was expected of him. However being the socially awkward person he is infamous for being, he decided against saying anything.

Archie smiled when he saw nobody ask questions, so he said "Well then, without further ado lets get on with the job."


	5. Chapter 5 - The Goblin's Nest

Justin was crouching in the shadows, trying his best to hide from the large group of Goblins that were swarming around outside a large, black and heavily cracked building. He constantly checked to his left, waiting for those idiotic teammates of his to initiate the distraction. "Why the hell am I doing this?" Justin muttered to himself as he shook his head. He was about to stand up and walk away before he glanced to the left one last time, and saw the green haired guy slowly walk over towards the gathering of goblins. Justin pulled out the binoculars from his inventory that Harold had given him and he used it to get a close and personal glimpse of Archie in action.

Archie slowly strutted up to the group, and using his model class ability "Alluring Looks" (which attracted the attention of all nearby hostile enemies, but did not allow them to attack him for 180 seconds) walked into the middle of the group. Once Archie had the attention of the swarm of Goblins, he flicked his hair up and then ran his right hand through his hair. He winked at the Goblins and stripped his shirt off slowly and slid it off his back. He blew a kiss at the swarm and smiled is most alluring smile and said "Well, I think you lot need to follow me." and started to strut towards the designated ambush area.

Justin put his binoculars away and muttered "Show off." However he was intrigued about the class power Archie's had used. Class powers were one of the many things that helped differentiate the classes in Whispers in the Darkness. They are special abilities that can be activated once a day that grant its users amazing abilities. All classes have multiple of these types of abilities, but considering Justin was level 2 he had only unlocked one called "Forensics." This ability highlights any recent footprints and DNA in a 50 meter radius, which like most starter abilities is underwhelming but has niche uses. Justin stood up slowly, cracked his knuckles and said "Ok, then. Lets get moving." as he began to head to the now deserted outside building.

Justin reached the large, wooden door that acted as the only entrance to the semi destroyed building. He leaned up against the walls, and slowly pushed the door open with is hand until it was completely open. He pulled his gun and a flashlight out of his inventory and flicked the flashlight on. He put his gun hand over the top of his flashlight hand, so that they were both pointing in front of him. This position reminded him of when he first played FPS's, when he would run around with a similar weapon position, except he'd usually used a knife as opposed to a flashlight. He jumped into the doorway, and used his flashlight to quickly scan the room for Goblins, but he failed to see any Goblins, all he saw was blood dripping off of the walls and stinky remains of corpses. Justin turned back, and slowly closed the door behind him.

Once the door was closed, he noticed that the room wasn't as dark as he expected it would be, so he turned off his flashlight, and stored it in his inventory. He held his gun firmly in his right hand as he slowly crept through the room, trying his best not to step in the large pools of blood. The disgusting, stale smell of both freshly and long dead corpses was so powerful it made Justin's eyes water, and whenever he breathed through his nostrils he almost choked. It everything about this situation was unpleasant, but as long as he stayed on top of his emotions and his sanity remained at safe levels, he would be fine.

As he made it to the door in the next room, he heard a weird, indistinct crackling noise. It sounded almost like radio static, and he could hear it coming closer. Justin quickly looked around at his surroundings, and saw a large pile of freshly dead corpses lying on top of each other in the corner. He hesitated for a second, but when the sound of crackling got even closer he ran to the pile and crawled onto it, trying to act deceased. Justin kept his eyes closed as he heard a creaky door open, and then heard footsteps in the pool of blood. Justin tried to keep his eyes closed, he wasn't too keen on dying again. However curiosity for what those imp like things looked like up close caught the better of him, and he opened his eyes. What he saw was a creature approximately half a meter in height, that was all black. It looked similar to a dog, that was able to stand on its hind legs. Not only that but it was completely black except for a few small grey lines over its body that were constantly wriggling. The weird imp thing was foraging through a pile of organs that were on the other side of the room. When it selected an organ, which Justin recognized as a lung, it sat down and started to greedily gulp down on it. Justin shuddered at the site, but took this opportunity whilst it was distracted to slowly stand up, and making sure he didn't step in blood walked over to the Goblin, so that he was right behind it. He opened his inventory, and quickly switched his gun out for a dagger. He pulled it out and quickly sliced the neck of the small creature, killing it in an instant. He knew he couldn't use his gun here, it made too much noise for this situation, since it would give Justin's position away the second he shot. Black blood began to pour out of the Goblins neck, covering Justin in it blood. Justin pulled back quickly and whispered "Fuck me." as his coat and pants were already soaked in the things blood.

Justin quickly recovered from the shock, and continued his slow and methodical march into the building. Thankfully, the door was already open, and he could see light emitting from the next room and could here the crackling of fire. Justin quickly slipped through the door, and ran behind a nearby desk. He covertly looked around this new room, despite the light it was just as unpleasant as the last. It was covered in just as much blood, and reeked like the first room did. Justin paused for a second and wondered just how many people had been killed by these things. Then he remembered Archie saying that only a few NPCs had been killed. Justin quickly realized that he had obviously stumbled into something a lot more dangerous and complicated than he and his group initially thought. Justin sighed and muttered "Great, and now I have to do this while I'm critically under-leveled." He shook his head, and said "Well, I made it this far. And I know not to log out immediately when I die this time."

...

Meanwhile, the rest of The Electric Moccasins finished their tasks, and started to slowly walk back to the new Goblins nest. "I hope dat laddie ain't gone and died on us." Harold said.

Jasmine nodded and said "Agreed, it will be such a pain if he goes ahead and fails."

"Well maybe we put too much faith in someone so under-leveled." Tabby growled

"Look, we can worry about the ifs, buts and whats later. However that won't accomplish anything. Lets just get back, and see what we have to deal with their." Archie said, his shirt still off, proudly showing off his muscular body.

...

Justin sighed as he slit the neck of the twentieth Goblin, and its blood splattered on his clothes once more, making them even dirtier. He checked his level, he had advanced to level 4, which meant that it was getting ever so slightly easier to slaughter those inept Goblins. It struck Justin as odd that there was never any more than two Goblins per room, but he just put that down to sheer stupidity on the part of the Goblins. By now his nose was adjusting to the smell, and he was clearing rooms rather quickly as he learnt the patterns of the Goblins. He was even starting to enjoy himself now, and a wide smile spread across his lips as he entered a new room, stealthily walked around the edges and assassinated all of the demon like creatures inside.

At this new rather quick rate of room clearing, he quickly made it to a room that was filled with cages. He scanned the room, this room seemed to have no blood or corpses in or around it,and the smell was a lot less weak. However it seemed that this room was designed to keep prisoners, since there were people that seemed to be knocked out and were lying in cages. He thoroughly checked the room to see that there were no Goblins there at all, so he ran up to the cage. However as he was running he tripped on something, which caused him to fall flat on his face. He looked behind him and saw a pair of weird shoes. They looked like fancy loafers, however these ones seemed to emit a weird, blue aura. Justin had no idea what these shoes where, so he picked them up and put them in his inventory. Then he picked himself up, and ran over towards one of the cages that had an unconscious, man inside of it. He pulled a lock-pick out of his inventory, stuck it in a lock and started to fiddle with it madly in order to break the lock open. All of a sudden Justin heard "There's the idiot." which caused him to turn around. All he saw was a fist fly at his face, which hit him hard and knocked him unconscious.


	6. Chapter 6 - The Cthulhu's 5 Generals

Justin slowly opened his eyes as he regained consciousness. He groggily looked around, but failed to see anything properly due to his incredibly blurry vision. He tried to move his hands up to rub his eyes, however he found himself unable to do so and quickly realized that his hands were tied to something. As his vision returned, he quickly realized that he was sitting on a bed of straw and that he was surrounded by bars. Justin quickly came to the conclusion that he was trapped inside a cage, which made him shout "FUCK!"

Justin glanced over to his left when he heard a voice say "So, who are you little one?" Justin was greeted with the image of a smiling man with wild brown hair and a wild brown beard in a cage next to his. He looked like he had been stuck here for quite a while.

Justin looked at him cautiously and said "My name's Justin Credible, where are we?"

The man giggled and said "Where are you manners boy? Shouldn't you ask me for my name first?"

Justin sighed and said "Fine then, what's your name?"

The man stared at Justin and said "Well the name's Horace Whistleblower, and I am basically an information desk. You need information and I give it to you."

Justin looked up above Horace's head and saw that there was no name above him, which meant he was an NPC. Justin was surprised at how human-like the AI acted in this game. Justin cough and asked "So, if you know everything where are we, how did we get here and why am I tied up?"

Horace looked up into the air and began explaining "Well we are in a building that has become the nest of Goblins, and the home of a traitorous cult guild named the Electric Moccasins."

Justin's sighed and said "Really, those idiots?"

Horace moved in closer to Justin and said "Oh, you were tricked in entering in here freely with them weren't you?" Justin simply nodded and Horace continued to say "Well this explains a lot. You see these guys have done this before. They capture low level ignorant runts like yourself, make them enter this building and knock them out. Then they tie them up so they cannot access their inventory and log themselves out, and then they do two things to them. They steal their stuff, and sacrifice them to their god, 'Nielk'."

Justin looked puzzled and asked "Nielk?"

Horace shook his head and said "Sorry son, I forgot you are new. You see in this room whilst there is Cthulhu, the major God there are several minor gods, all of which are grotesque, demonic monsters. However there are 5 beings, that are even more powerful than the minor gods."

Justin asked "Who are these beings."

Horace smirked and said "Well, as the story goes they are 5 former humans who all belonged to the same guild. They were amazing players, who were feared an respected among all of the other players. However one day they met Cthulhu, the being behind all of this mess and tried to take him down. However, there are no mortal beings than can resist Cthulhu's corruption and those five were overwhelmed with his demonic influence and power. They then became the 5 commanders of Cthulhu's powerful army, and have brought destruction to players ever since."

Justin looked at him and asked "Who are these beings?"

Horace continued to explain by saying "Well, let me just explain them in a little detail. First you have Thebsil the Goddess of creation. She basically just loves combining things together, and is always creating new monstrosities to wreck havoc on players. Next you have Nielk, who that group who caught us worship. He is the God of deception and all of the minions he commands are deceptively strong. Thirdly, you have Momis the Goddess of the Shadows. The minions she commands are all designed to kill you from a distance. Fourthly you have Anusana, the Goddess of the Elements. She doesn't command monsters, she simply corrupts players with power to make them work for her. And finally you have the God of Destruction, Kikorit. He is by far the most angry of the Gods, and like Anusana he doesn't command monsters, he simply destroys those he is annoyed with himself. Now all of these gods have maintained their basic human form, although they are a lot more monster like. Now any more questions?"

Justin just sat there, nodding his head. It seemed like a pretty standard plot for an MMO, to make a villain and claim it was a former player. Justin suddenly remembered something he needed to ask this guy. "So ummmmm, I got these weird, glowing shows before I was knocked out. What do they do?"

Horace shook his head and said "Well, whilst I won't be able to tell you what it is unless I am looking at it, I can tell you what the item is broadly. You see there are certain items in the game that give their wielder magical and powerful abilities. They are extremely rare and are supposed to be only entrusted to Cthulhu's most powerful monsters, but are sometimes found scattered around the place."

Justin nodded his head and asked "Wait, why are you here?"

Horace looked up and explained "I was captured, and they want someone like me to stick around because I can give them all the information they need. I serve a purpose you see."

Justin was about to ask something else when he suddenly felt something weird, like his body was tingling. He tried to say something, but words were failing to come out. His eyes began to bleed as his body started to shake, and all of a sudden he felt himself being shot out of his body, and everything went white.

When Justin could see again, he was in this weird white void. He immediately noticed he was untied, so he stood up and rubbed his wrists. He decided it would be best to reach for his gun, however he for some reason couldn't open his inventory. "What the hell is happening?" he muttered to himself.

Suddenly he heard some weird, disjointed feminine voice call out "You can't open your inventory stupid Mortal, your not actually here."

Justin looked around frantically and said "Where the hell are you."

The peculiar feminine voice that didn't seem to have an origin said "Well well, how rude of me. I shall present myself, if you can handle my image." And as it finished speaking, a female figure suddenly appeared in front of Justin. This figure however was beyond strange, it had extremely long blood red coloured hair that Justin was convinced was made out of real blood, considering droplets of it seemed to be constantly dripping off her hair. Her eyes were just these creepy black holes, she had no nose and her mouth seemed to have cracks spreading from her mouth. Her skin was this extremely pale white colour, and she seemed to be about as tall as Justin was.

Justin flinched a littler at her grotesque appearance, but he tried to maintain his composure. He glared at the creep woman and asked "What do you want, freak?"

The creepy looking woman laughed to herself and said "Well, I must commend you. You are standing in the face of Anusana, yet you act tough."

Justin remembered that name, Horace explained that she was someone who like to corrupt people, which made Justin assume that this thing was going to try corrupt him. "This isn't an act darling, now get away of I will kill you." Justin said, trying in vain to intimidate this grotesque woman.

Anusana laughed again and said "Just as I thought, you are an interesting one." She walked over to Justin, who tried to move, but found himself incapable of moving at all. She got really close to him and in her creepy voice slowly said "Well, it seems that you are in a little predicament in the real world with the worshipers of Nielk. Well, fortuitously for you me and Nielk are having a little bit of a disagreement, so I would love to give you the power you need to help yourself."

Justin tried to avoid eye contact with the being and said "It isn't really helping myself if you are giving me power. Anyway, I decline."

Anusana giggled a little, and said "Fool, you like most mortals seem to think this is a choice." as she moved her hand up into the air, and her fingertip started to glow a purple colour.

Justin tried to struggle and run away, but he found himself completely incapable of moving at all. Anusana then touched Justin's forehead with her finger, which sent a huge jolt of pain through his entire body. Justin began to scream in agony as he felt huge amounts of pain, and Anusana began to slowly move her hand, marking his forehead.

"Now now little mortal. I know your body is weak but please, withstand it for a second. You will enjoy this when it is over." Anusana explained as she finished drawing a spiral like pattern onto Justin's head. When she was done, Justin was able to move which caused him to collapse to his knees and he began to mutter and whimper, he had to experience and insane amount of pain. Anusana turned and began walking away before she said "Don't worry mortal, the pain will go away when I send you back to your body. Now use this power of mine, and murder the people that betrayed you." Then she snapped her fingers, and Justin's vision suddenly went black.


	7. Chapter 7 - New Powers

Horace stared at Justin curiously. Justin's pupils seemed to have rolled into the back of his head, and his eyes were emitting a slow stream of blood as he sat there, shaking a little. It was rather creepy, to the point where Horace assumed that if he was a human, this would cause him to lose a little sanity. He gasped when Justin suddenly stopped shaking, and his pupils rolled back so that they were facing forward.

Justin came to his senses quickly, and looked around rapidly. He was relieved when he realized that he was back in that cage, which struck him as rather ironic. But he took comfort in the fact that at least he didn't have to stare at that thing anymore in that weird, white limbo. Justin tried to move his hands, to see that they were still chained to the bars behind him. All of a sudden he heard that disgusting female's voice say "_Oh how silly of me. Let me handle that for you._" and all of a sudden the binds holding Justin down disappeared, allowing him to move his arms freely again.

Horace saw Justin move his hands again and asked "How did you do that?"

Justin shook his head in distress and said "I don't know. All I remember is suddenly being transported into some weird, white limbo with this thing that called itself Anusana, and then it drew a mark on my head and sent me back. And then it somehow made the bars disappear and I don't know what the fuck is happening." Justin paused for a second and remembered those shoes he picked up. Without hesitation he opened his inventory and equipped those strange shoes. Immediately after putting those shoes on, he felt an insane amount of pain in his forehead, and collapsed onto the ground holding his temple. It felt like something was stabbing his brain over and over again. He started to shake a little as the pain began to fade, he was reacting to this situation similarly to how he acted when he was crushed by that abomination.

Horace realized immediately what was happening, so he reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette and a lighter. He lit the cigarette and threw it into Justin's cage. "Smoke that son, it will make you feel good."

Justin looked at the cigarette and shouted "How the hell will that help me?"

Horace looked at Justin and explained "Well much like their effects in the real world, they calm you down and in this game they restore sanity. Normally it would cost you top dollar for that, but I feel like you are the only way I will ever get out of this cage."

Justin looked at the cigarette skeptically, and slowly picked it up and put it in his mouth. He had never smoked before, and assumed it would taste as foul as he was told it would in real life. However this was not the case, in fact it tasted really good, and soothed Justin a lot, like everything that unsettled him no longer mattered. He pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and blew out a large puff of smoke. He sat back up and looked over at Horace and asked "What the hell happened there."

Horace coughed and said "Well you see, magical items like your shoes reduce sanity significantly when humans put them on, because your human minds can't handle their insane amount of power at first. In fact that sanity drop happens so quick that it hurts your mind, and slightly reduces your overal sanity permanently. However if you smoke a cigarette most of your sanity will come back to you."

Justin nodded as that was explain, it was as if the game had a risk v reward system for powerful items. He looked over at Horace and asked "Do you by chance know what my shoes do?"

Horace looked down at Justin's shoes and said "Well, now that I can see them I know that those are Bokrug's Shoes, which allows its wielder to walk on walls and roofs."

Justin nodded his head, those shoes of his seemed pretty damn powerful. Suddenly Justin remembered something from earlier so he asked "Excuse me, is there any mark on my forehead?"

Horace shook his head and asked "Why do you ask?"

Justin shook his head and said "Never mind. Something weird happened."

Immediately after Justin said that, the door to the cage room suddenly opened, and Justin saw the shadow of someone approaching. That person turned out to be Tabitha. The boxer walked up to Justin's cage and immediately noticed he was smoking and had his hands free. She glared at him and asked "Where the hell did you get that, and how the hell did you untie yourself?"

Justin put the smoke back into his mouth and looked at the ground. "It's a really long story, and I doubt you would believe me. Anyway why was I tied up?"

Tabby ignored Justin's response and said "Damn, Nielk will be mad about this"

Justin was about to ask who she meant by Nielk, when he remembered what Horace and Anusana told him. "They were right?" Justin said, obviously shocked by this revelation.

Tabitha continued to ignore Justin, and opened her inventory to grab the key for the lock. "Whatever, I can knock him back out." She said as she put the key into the lock, and opened the door.

Justin only had time to stand up before Tabby walked into the cage, and threw a bullet like punch at him. However, unlike the last one that was thrown at him, this punch seemed to be a lot slower. This allowed Justin to react in time and duck, dodging the hit. Tabby simply growled and threw another lower punch at Justin's stomach, which Justin managed to block in time. He then pushed Tabby onto the ground, and quickly jumped out of the cage, and locked it before Tabby could get out. Justin looked over at Horace, cigarette still in his mouth and he asked "Ok, what the hell. How did I do that."

Horace shrugged his shoulders and said "Check your stats."

Justin opened up is menu, and clicked on the stat window and gasped at what he saw. His stats were completely insane for someone who was still level four, like something had come along and doubled or even tripled his stats. "Well, that's a thing." Justin said as he closed his window, and turned to see Tabby unlocking the cage with her key. Justin wanted to go into his inventory to pull out a weapon of some kind, but he knew he wouldn't have time so he had to fight a higher leveled, unarmed combat specialist in unarmed combat. Justin sighed, he didn't fancy his odds here at all. Justin quickly ducked to dodge a swing at his face, and then blocked a lower jab with is elbow. After blocking and dodging a few hits from Tabitha, Justin quickly realized that he wasn't going to be able to keep this up, this girl was just far too fast and strong for him, even with that stat increase. He needed to do something, but he didn't know what to do.

Justin suddenly felt a hot, tingly sensation on his forehead which mean that his purple spiral on his head was glowing, which caught Tabitha by surprise so she jumped back and asked "What the hell is that mark?"

Justin suddenly felt himself overcome with the desire to punch Tabitha, so he ran up to her and threw a punch at her head. As he was throwing the punch, he felt a sharp jolt of pain in his arm and he looked in horror as random, large spikes seemed to begin to jut out of his hand, and despite the fact that Tabitha dodged the punch, the spikes from Justin's hands slashed her neck and left shoulder, causing significant damage to the dark skinned boxer. Justin saw her collapse, and wasted no time in running up to Tabbitha and punching her in the chest, stabbing her with the spikes jutting from his right arm and immediately killed her. Justin pulled his hand back out of her chest, and just stared at his hand in horror as the spikes suddenly dropped from his hand disolved in the air. Suddenly the tingling sensation in his forehead subsided, as if the two were linked. Justin just stared at his hand when he heard Anusana's voice once more say "_Well, I see you got your first kill with my power. Soon enough you will be in control over it, and you will be a bringer of death to all that stand in your way. But remember two things, firstly before you master this ability your sanity will decrease when you use it, and secondly I highly advise trying not to use it in public, because people don't seem to like those who have been blessed with my power._"

When Anusana finished talking, Justin shook his head and ran over towards Tabitha, and took advantage of the small window of opportunity where you are allowed to loot recently deceased corpses to take the key to the cages. He walked over to Horace and unlocked the cage lock, opened the door and said "Well, enjoy your freedom."

Horace looked left to right slowly and said "I never thought I would ever leave that cage again."

Justin was about to say something else when he heard "Oh me god, dat laddie has killed da lassie."

Justin looked back behind him, to see Harold, Jasmine and Archie standing in the doorway. Justin shook his head and said "I presume you are mad at me for killing your friend right?"

Harold shook his head, pulled out a huge rifle from his inventory and said "Yer right laddie."

Justin glared at them and his forehead started to glow again, however this time the spikes grew out of both arms, his legs and his bag. This sudden change in appearance caused the three to stare at him shocked, and Jasmine asked "What the hell happened to you."

Justin smiled a demonic, mischievous smiled and slowly walked closer to the three. "Well, I guess you could blame Nielk for my powers." and with that he lept that the confused trio, and began to hack into them relentlessly.


	8. Chapter 8 - The Generals's meeting

Justin pulled his spiked fist out of the stomach of Archie, and he simply stood there smiling a creepy demonic smile as Archie's blood splattered all over him. By now he was almost covered head to toe in a mixture of his blood, Goblin blood and the blood of that stupid guild that tried to tie him up. He couldn't deny that, whilst it hurt having spikes jutting out of his skin, killing those people was unbelievably fun. He felt a strong and sudden desire to continue keep going, however he shook his head, and calmed himself down. He watched as the mass protrusion of spikes jutting from his body fell out and dissolved, leaving his arms completely unmarked. Justin sighed and said "Well, that felt weird."

Horace walked up behind him and said "Well boy, congratulations on your killing, you just took out an entire criminal gang."

Justin turned to look at Horace and asked "Will they remember how I killed them."

Horace shook his head "Nope, you see in PVP kills the game delete's the loser's memory of the specifics of how they died. All they will remember is that all four of them faced a level 4 private eye in a frontal assault, and they all died. So I doubt they will come after you anymore." Horace started to walk away as he said that, probably eager to leave the building.

Justin didn't follow him, he just turned to him and called out "Horace, what happens if I get corrupted by those General people?"

Horace scoffed and said "You will lose control of your current character, and you will be forcefully re-spawned with another character, and your old character will become an NPC, that does nothing but listen to the will of those Generals that corrupted you." and then he opened the door slowly. Before leaving he turned around and fished something out of his pocket "Here boy, a reward for helping me here." and he threw a sack on the ground before he walked out of the building and away to his freedom.

Justin ran up to the doorway, and picked up the sack. It seemed to be full of money, and upon putting it in his inventory it was revealed to be $250 of 1930's currency, which translated to thousands in the modern world. Justin closed his inventory and looked around the building he was in. He smirked, this place would make a pretty damn good place to live, once all of the blood, corpses and organs were gone of course. He cracked his knuckles, looks like he needed to do some cleaning to do. However after about one hour, Justin realized that he had no actual way of cleaning anything since he didn't have any tools required, like a mop. So he simply sighed and said "That'll do for the day." and opened his menu and logged off.

...

Justin opened his eyes suddenly as his conscious was sent back into his body. He slowly removed the Amushpere from his head and put it down on his bedside table. Justin smiled, he was simply glad that after logging off this time he felt no pain at all, and had proper control of his body and emotions. He looked at his computer, and was shocked when he discovered that he had had spent over 12 hours in that VRMMO today. He slapped his hand against his head and said "Damn, that's probably incredibly unhealthy." Justin shook his head and decided he should probably just fall asleep.

...

In the virtual world of The Whispers in the Dark, Anusana was sitting at a large round table in the middle of her lovely little limbo world. She wasn't alone however, as there were 4 other seats at this table, all occupied by the shadowy figures of the other Generals. She was smiling slyly as she asked "So, what brings you four to my realm?"

"You should know." A deep, sinister voice growled. "Why do you keep killing out worshipers, there was a strict agreement between the 5 of us not to do that. And these people you are giving power to aren't even your followers, they are just random nobodies you give power to. Some of them don't even want it."

Anusana leaned back and started laughing to herself like a maniac, which caused the other Generals to look at her angrily. When she finished laughing she smiled again and said "I'm sorry, but its not my fault. When I see something or someone interesting, I just have to have it. If anything you should blame your own followers for trying to sacrifice souls that are just so interesting to me."

The same figure from before pounded a large hand on the table and shouted "I don't give a damn about what you find interesting, just stop killing my people. It's like you don't trust us or something."

Anusana snorted and said "Ha, you say that I don't trust any of you, yet you are all hiding yourselves in the shadows, what sort of message does that send to me? Come one Nielk, tell me."

Before the figure that was Nielk could respond a different, much smaller figure with a much more high pitched voice piped up and asked "Do you really find meddling with humans so fun Anusana?"

Anusana looked at the smaller figure to the left of the larger one and said "Oh yes Thebsil, in fact if you want I could show you just how fun it is one of these days, and I even have someone in mind to play with. Trust me you will love him, the guy got crushed and then logged off immediately, and he is still playing to this day."

The small shadowy figure could be heard clapping its hand and it squealed "Wow, this is going to be so much fun. I can't wait to meet someone so insane."

Before Anusana could respond a loud, booming voice originating from the figure who was sitting opposite Anusana shouted "I think we are getting off topic, please we need to discuss the original issue."

Anusana crossed her arms, turned around and said "As far as I am concerned, the discussion is over. Bye bye." and she clicked her fingers, and the table, chairs and the shadowy figures suddenly disappeared. Anusana hoped that her new servant was enjoying its last few days of free will, because she wasn't going to let someone like that slip through her fingers. And who knows, when she inevitably kills Nielk this guy could make a fine replacement for him.

...

Justin yawned as he slowly sat up. He hadn't really done too much sleeping that night, because for a long time he was lying down thinking about questions he had about this VRMMO. Thankfully for him he remembered most of them when he woke up. He smiled and said "Well, thank god for my good old friend, the Internet." before he got up and walked over to his computer.

After about 3 hours of reading forums, FAQs and guides on this game he learnt a few helpful pieces of information, firstly the cult system, wherein you can pick a General or a Minor God to worship, and they will give you special powers as long as you follows certain rules and regulations. However if those rules are broken then they are punished severely for their crimes. However, this system only applies for all of the Minor Gods and the three objectively weakest Generals. If you wish to worship Anusana or Kikorit, who have no rules or guidelines for worship and offer immense power then you must be chosen by them, and Kikorit has yet to choose anyone ever since he was first introduced. Justin had to give the game credit for its amazing AI, not only was Horace a believable and self aware NPC, but the Gods seemed to be so exact, so perfect in how they operated that Justin almost assumed they couldn't be AIs. They were simply that good.

A related bit of information he picked up was that if you are sacrificed to a God, then you must start again with a new character, and your old character becomes an AI servant to the god they were sacrificed to. It was incredibly similar to the corruption mechanic Horace explained to him earlier.

Another helpful and relieving bit of information Justin managed to discover is that after 24 hours, all visible blood, corpses and organs will disappear if there are no Monsters around. This blood will then only be able to be able to be seen for another week by those with the proper skills, before it then also disappears. And since Justin completely cleared that building he had claimed, it seemed that he wouldn't have to clean anything up after all. Also, it was discovered by him that clothes will automatically be cleaned once the character logs off. That was good news, considering he needed that building and his clothes to use for the business he would have to have to make.

You see, unlike in normal VRMMOs, monsters don't drop money. They drop items that can be crafter into stuff by certain classes and sometimes rare items like his Bokrug's shoes. Therefore, most classes have no need for a lot of items, so they have to go into a market, and sell it for money, goods or services. Each class has a store type they can open in order to get ingredients they need to make stuff, and to sell the stuff that they make. Some classes, like private eye for example cannot make anything, so they need to buy everything they want. And the only way they can get money is by solving mysteries for people, which involves finding lost items, tracking down murderous players and monsters and following suspicious people. Justin even had the name for what he was going to call his business, the Just Incredible Private Eye Services.

Justin stood up after is in depth stroll through the Internet, and slowly walked over to his shower. It was time he prepared himself for another rather long stay in that VRMMO world.


	9. Chapter 9 - Tram Trouble

Justin slipped his Amusphere onto his head and lay down on his bed. He closed his eyes and said "Activate!" before his conscious was sent into cyberspace.

Justin opened his eyes to see that he was sitting inside that building he now claimed he owned. He looked at his clothes, to see they were now completely clean and dry. He smiled, he was back in business. Justin looked up and muttered "Well I need to advertise my business, and probably get a few guns. So I guess its time to go to the city." Before Justin had logged on he had downloaded and tried to roughly memorize a map of this game's version of Chicago. According to his guide, in order to get into town from his building in the Northeastern part of the City he needed to walk 1km south and catch a tram to the city. Justin was rather surprised when he discovered that Trams were in the game, but it was justifiable since they seemed to act as a glorified fast travel system. Cracked his knuckles, and started to walk to the closest tram station.

As soon as Justin happened to arrive at the station, a tram pulled up in front of him. Justin smiled and boarded onto the train as he said "Finally some luck." After boarding the tram, Justin looked around at the players in the carriage with him, there was a rough, bearded homeless looking man who seemed to be asleep, a proud looking slightly overweight military officer with long white hair, another sheepish looking military man standing besides him who was probably his subordinate, a rather plump man brandishing a large hunting rifle with crazy and curly red hair, a man wearing glasses who seemed to be engrossed in a book, a young looking black haired attractive lady, a very pale man who was sitting down and shaking like crazy and brown haired muscular and bearded man. Everyone else on the tram seemed to be NPCs, so Justin didn't bother to remember their names.

Justin sat down and leaned against the walls of the tram. He looked to the left as he heard the lady ask "Hey sir, are you ok?" Justin looked at the man he assumed was she was addressing, the guy who was shaking uncontrollably. The sick looking guy didn't say anything, he simply looked up slowly and seemed to nod his head. However Justin couldn't tell whether or not the guy was actually nodding since he was shaking so uncontrollably.

Justin closed his eyes and began to lean back against the wall of the tram again. Justin only opened his eyes when he heard a deep voice ask "Excuse me sir, but are you are private detective?"

Justin opened his eyes to see the bearded, muscular man standing in front of him. Justin looked at him as he replied "Yeah, a relatively new one but that doesn't change the fact that I am one."

The man extended his hand to offer a handshake and said "The name's Jack Hartley I am a level 5 tobacconist, what's your name?"

Justin hesitantly reached his hand out and shook his hand "Well thanks Jack, my name is Justin Credible and I am level 4 technically. And I assume that the fact that you approached a stranger means that you have some ulterior motive."

Jack nodded his head and said "Well errr yeah I do. I just want to know if you would be willing to do some kind of job for me."

Justin looked up and asked "Yeah, I guess I can. What did you have in mind." Before Jack could respond however, the tram went underneath a tunnel, so the lights keeping the windowless tram illuminated started to flash rapidly. This rapid flashing lasted for about a minute before Justin said "Jesus what kind of tunnel are we going down?"

When the flashing eventually stopped, a large scream suddenly resounded throughout the tram and Justin and Jack could only look on in Horror as the entire tram seemed to have been coated with blood. "Jesus Christ." Jack said, obviously shocked at what had happened.

Justin quickly looked around, it seemed that all of the NPCs on the train were killed whilst the human players were spared. Justin fell forward a little as the tram quickly came to a sudden halt. Justin looked over at Jack and asked "You got cigarettes?"

Jack nodded and meekly said "Y-yeah lots."

"Throw me a pack, then light yourself one, then hand everyone on this tram one. Understood." Justin slowly explained.

Jack simply nodded and threw a packet of cigarettes and matches over to Justin and slowly walked through the tram, trying to avoid the piles of corpses.

Justin sighed as he closed his eyes and lit himself a cigarette. He looked down at the piles of bodies and organs as he put it into his mouth, and allowed the soothing drug to calm his nerves. He was surprised how well he handled the shock, but he assumed it was another effect of that stupid invisible mark on his head. After Justin lit his cigarette, he looked over at the door to see the two military men slowly forcing the door open, so he creeped up behind them, making sure not to step in any blood, corpses or organs on his way. By the time he had reached the door, the two had forced it opened and had stepped out of the tram. Justin shrugged, and decided it would be best to follow them. So he opened his inventory, pulled out his handgun and slowly walked outside.

When Justin stepped off the train, he couldn't help but utter "What?" as he was confronted with what seemed to be a modern day subway station one would expect to find in present day, but not 1920s Chicago. The place was very white and sparkly, with glass doors and a coke machine. However the place reeked of this disgusting, stale scent that was so strong it almost choked Justin when he breathed in through his nose. Not only that, but there was random objects lying on the floor, for example there seemed to be the headpieces of Roman soldiers, and muskets from the 1700s scattered all over the door. Justin walked forward, making sure not to touch anything and turned to look at the Tram and its tracks so he could follow them and leave. However he immediately noticed that there were shadows that he couldn't see through in a 5 meter radius of the tram. Justin pulled out his torchlight and tried to shine it into the shadows, but that didn't help, it was like the darkness devoured the beam of light.

Justin looked as the other scared looking occupants of the tram slowly exited the vehicle, all of them brandishing a weapon of some sort, and all of them had a cigarette in their mouths. Justin looked at the names of everyone leaving the tram and memorized them. It was normally considered rude not to ask someone for their name, but in situations like this as far as Justin was concerned politeness can go and die. Justin looked up into the sky and sighed, he could only hope that the power of his that Anusana gave him wouldn't suddenly go off with all of these people around.

Suddenly, the old military commander called Bruce Banner walked in front of the group, turned to them and shouted "Alright maggots, listen up. We have been transported to somewhere unfamiliar to me or Private Jefferson, so does anyone know where we might be?"

The man with glasses called Jeffery Falkner put his hand up and said "Ummm, I do."

"Alrighty son, now what is this place?" Bruce shouted.

The man tapped his glasses and said "Well sir, as a Librarian I recently read a book about phenomenon like this. To but it briefly and simply, it seems that a being of higher power has set up a little test for us, and the reward for this test is not dying. Now I don't know the specifics of these tests, since they change every time but be assured that this will not be pleasant."

Justin snorted, it made sense that the Librarian class would basically make you a bank of knowledge.

General Bruce smiled and said "OK then maggots, I want all of you to tell the group your names immediately. First as you may have guess I am aaaaa..." His voice then trailed off as his face became pale white, and he just looked at something that seemed to be behind the group in horror.

Justin, just like the rest of the group slowly turned around to see what the General was so scared about. What Justin saw made him shiver in horror. The thing that Justin was looking at seemed to be a giant looking spider-like creature slowly walking out of the shadows. This creature had 8 legs that were longer than the length of the tram, and its black skin was similar to that of the goblins. But what was truly horrifying was its face, it was a human's face, except it seemed to be off. Like it was simply stuck on there hastily. Part of the face seemed to even be falling off of the spider creature, and blood was pouring out of that spot. As well as that, it seemed to have weird, claw-like hands that were stretching out of its cheeks, like they were some sort of creepy pincers for the creature. The creature opened its mouth, and sent out a creepy noise, which sounded like some sort of weird mixture between static and human screams that just felt uncomfortable to listen to. Justin slowly raised his handgun, and started to fire rapidly at the beast.


	10. Chapter 10 - The Library

"Crap." Justin cried out as he reloaded a new clip into his handgun slowly. His bullets did nothing to the large spider thing and simply bounced off of the beast. Justin sighed and muttered "Well, that's not gonna do anything." About 3 seconds after he said that however, everyone else seemed to start firing at the spider like monster. "Idiots, that won't do anything." Justin said after he turned around and began to walk away slowly. However, no one listened to him and just continued to shoot the thing out of fear almost. Justin knew that if his bullets did nothing to that thing, it would probably be best to keep himself at a distance. He reached the walls of the tram station, leaned back on the wall and watched as the spider thingy seemed to smile and just absorbed the barrage of bullets that people were shooting it with. Justin scanned the crowd once more, and suddenly realized that the only human who hadn't left the tram was the man who was shaking like crazy, in fact Justin hadn't seen him since the whole blinking tram calamity, maybe he was the one real player who died on the tram. Justin inhaled on his cigarette as she thought. He decided it was best to stop thinking about what happened to that pale guy, and to start observing what the spider thing is doing, to see if the thing has any weak points.

Whilst it absorbed the excessive amounts of fire the weird spider creature just stood there, smiling a creepy smile on the face that was seemingly just hanging off of its head like it was enjoying being shot at. Then after a while, the group seemed to run out of bullets, and once they did they all looked at each other, with no idea of what to do next. The beast however knew exactly what to do, it cried out a scary high pitched squeal and began to attack. With lightning speed, it moved its front left leg up and with unbelievable speed moved it over to the army general, and stabbed him through the chest. The General tried to scream, but no noise came out of his mouth and he simply coughed up blood. "Jesus." The army private next to him stuttered out as he slowly walked backwards. The spider pulled its leg out of the torso of the General, and the man collapsed to the ground with his health close to zero he was definitely going to bleed out and die. Then before anyone could do anything else, the military private also got a leg through his torso and then a second one was punched through his neck, knocking his head cleanly off.

Justin gulped, he had to act fast before that spider thing took everyone out. He quickly looked around the room, and saw the glass doors. "Everyone before that thing kills you get into that door now!" and pointed at the doors.

The group turned around to see the door Justin was pointing at, and they started to head towards it scared for their lives. The homeless looking man, who seemed to be wielding nothing but a shiv was in front of the group, and was the closest to the door when one of the legs of the spider slammed down in front him. It was as if the spider was telling them that it wasn't letting them go that easily. However at that moment, the General cried out "Don't ignore me maggot!"

Justin looked behind the group, to see the general was standing near the body of the spider, which had crawled over the tram in order to extend its leg earlier. However the interesting thing about this was that he was smiling, and in his open hand he had some weird looking device. Justin smiled as he realized what it was, the guy had a grenade in his had. The moment Justin realized what it was, it blew up in the general's hand, blowing him up, causing a mild shock-wave that made everyone in the group stumble forward, and knocking the giant spider thing to the ground. It cried out as it toppled over, and its leg stopped blocking the path to the door. Justin looked at the carnage, it seemed that the explosion had caused the spider thing to bleed a weird, glowing purple liquid and it had scattered the general's blood and organs all over the room.

The group looked back at the spider for a few seconds, before they realized the intention of the General, and they all ran into the door as quickly as possible, except for Justin. Unlike the other members of the group, when Justin walked to the door her looked back at the creature that was slowly getting back onto its feet and muttered "Well, you went down fighting, good job General." before he dropped his cigarette from his mouth, turned around and slowly opened the door. Justin thought briefly about staying behind and using those spikes of his, however he didn't know how powerful his spikes actually were, and neither did he know how much health that giant spider was. So Justin decided against it. Justin entered the room, and closed the door behind him slowly as he looked at the surrounding area. "What the hell?" Justin asked himself as they appeared to have stumbled into some insanely large library. The place was insane, with a maze of bookshelves as far as the eye could see. Not only that, but there seemed to be a weird, circular pillar that was being covered by some sort of curtain. It actually reminded him of those aquarium pillar things that are found commonly in the waiting rooms of rather expensive hotel waiting rooms.

Justin finished looking at the room and looked at who was still alive. There was the homeless man called Barry Bedler who was wielding a shiv and gawking around aimlessly, the plump hunter wielding the Hunting Rifle who was called Max Power, the librarian with the thick glasses called Jeffery Falkner, The black haired Engineer lady who was called Janet Magner and the muscular Tobacconist called Jack Hartley. With the two soldiers gone Justin noted that the attack strength of the group as a whole had taken a dive, since the only two people left who would have a gun proficiency would be himself and the man with the hunting Rifle. Justin cracked his knuckles, if the two soldiers gone, the group had no leader and since he seemed to be the least traumatically effected, he thought he might as well take charge.

Justin slowly walked in front of the group of people and turned to look at them as she fished into his pocket and lit up another cigarette. He put it in his mouth, cracked his knuckles and said "Ok then, now with those two army officers down I will take charge of the leadership. First order of business, Jeffery is there anything else we need to know about this thing."

Jeffery shook his head and said "Well ummmmm, there is nothing specifically about how to end these things from what I have read. It just kinda seems to go on until the people causing them this to happen gets bored."

"And when do they get bored?" Justin asked

Jeffery hit his glasses back to his forehead and said "Well, normally they just send in monsters until everyone is dead."

Justin sighed and muttered "Great." He shook his head and loudly commanded to everyone "Well, what we need to do right now is scout around. Because just like the last room, there might be something terrifying in this room, so we will need to find it before it finds us." Justin paused to take a deep puff of his cigarette. Afterwards he continued with "Well, to make this scouting mission as safe as possible we will split into 3 groups of two. The groups will be as follows; Barry and Max will form group one, Jeffery and Janet will form group two, leaving me and Jack to make group three. We will split up, and after half an hour we will return to this spot so that if group does die, will we know it happened. Does everyone agree with this?"

The whole group seemed to nod, and everyone formed their respective groups and they started to slowly wander their separate directions.

...

"So, that little pet of yours has gone and taken charge hasn't he Anusana?" The shadowy figure standing behind Anusana said, as they both watched what has happening from a birds eye view on a television screen.

Anusana smirked and said "Well, lets just see how long he can hold out until he needs to reveal to everyone what he truly is. But are you enjoying this Thebsil?"

The shadowy figure clapped its hands and said "Yes, I understand why you do this kinda thing so often. And just wait to see what I put in this room."

"Oh, I can't wait." Anusana said smiling in anticipation.


	11. Chapter 11 - Thebsil's Puppet

Justin and Jack were slowly making their way through the labyrinth of bookcases. Justin quickly noticed that the books in here were from all sorts of time different time periods. Even though they were technically supposed to be in the late 1920s/early 1930s there were books such as Twilight and The Shining in the shelves. Justin looked over at Jack and asked "Jack have you seen anything?"

Jack looked at Justin, shook his head and said "No mate, nothing yet."

Justin nodded and said "Yeah I guess. Well we might as well go and meet up with the others. Its been about half an hour." Jack nodded, and the two walked over towards the center of the library once more.

When Justin and Jack made it towards the meeting area they saw that the team of Jeffery and Janet sitting on the ground, waiting for them. Jeffery looked up at him and angrily asked "Well, why were you guys so damn late? We were getting worried you idiots had gotten killed."

Justin shook his head and said "You were probably worried about your own safety much more than ours, but anyway do you have any idea where Barry and Max are?"

"You mean that smelly homeless guy and the fat hunter? Why the hell would I know where they are?" Jeffery snapped.

Justin nodded his head, on reflection that was a pretty stupid question.

"So, should we go find them then?" Jack piped up and asked.

"No, I'm not going out to find them." Janet cried out.

Justin looked at Janet, she was obviously taking this situation the worst of the whole group and she was the only one who wasn't smoking for some reason. Justin sighed and asked "Janet, why aren't you smoking?"

Janet shook her head and said "I don't want anything to do with those disgusting things. I don't want to get addicted to in real life."

Justin doubted that this was how it worked and he was about to comment on this when he and the rest of the group heard a loud scream coming from where Barry and Max went. The group turned to the origin of the sound and saw Barry and Max running towards the groups as fast as they could. They made it to the group, and Barry grabbed Justin's trench-coat and screamed "Help!"

"H-help what?" Justin asked the deranged looking homeless man. Then he heard some weird, cackling laugh which caused him to look up suddenly and see a large, humanoid figure in large black robe. Justin shoved Barry off of him and pulled his handgun out of his inventory, and pointed it at the figure. "What the hell are you?" Justin asked.

The figure just stared at the group and started to giggle to itself softly. The figure slowly moved its hand to its head, and pulled the robe's hood from his face to reveal exactly what it was.

Justin and the rest of the group gasped as saw that the person under the robe was the pale skinned man from the train. Everyone pulled out their respective weapons, and Max shouted "What the hell are you doing here, we all thought you were dead."

The shaking man who's name above his head revealed him to be called Martin Kenny didn't respond to the group. He simply smiled and loudly muttered "All I need to do now is kill them all, and then Mistress Thebsil said she would give me ultimate power. I won't disappoint you mistress."

Justin had heard that name Thebsil, she was a god just like Anusana. This meant that this guy probably had some weird abilities and strengths, and that level 15 above his head was basically meaningless. Justin looked at the group quickly and shouted "Look out, this guy is gonna have some insane abilities."

Just as Justin said that Martin seemed to move so quickly he almost teleported away, and no one knew where he actually went. Everyone looked around rapidly, until suddenly he appeared behind Max.

"Max, behind you!" Barry cried out as soon as he saw the pale man standing behind him.

Max slowly turned around and his face was grabbed by the pale man. He tried to fight the grasp of the pale man and break free, but he proved to be far too strong for Max.

Martin smiled and said "You will help me. Now, I command you, become one of Thebsil's servants." and with that a weird, black looking energy started to flow out of his robe, and onto Max. Max screamed loudly, and tried to break free whilst everyone else simply stared at the sight, all of them far too shocked to move at all. After 30 seconds, the black energy stopped flowing and Martin let go of Max who immediately collapsed.

Justin glared at Martin and asked "What the hell did you do to him?"

Martin didn't actually answer Justin and simply muttered "Funny, pests seem to be talking to me, expecting responses. Why would I talk to those with no goal, purpose or power. Whatever it shouldn't bother me too much, pretty soon they will all be silenced."

Justin shook his head, this guy was a madman who was in his own little world. Justin gulped, and decided to just shoot Martin before he could do anything else. However before he could shoot he heard Max start to moan and scream. Justin and the group just stared at him as he started violently shaking and screaming, before his body suddenly began to change. Firstly from his cheeks, two large pincers shot out of his cheeks, making it so that he couldn't talk anymore. Suddenly all of his body apart from his face started to change to an extremely dark shade of black, and his fingers suddenly became large, sharp talons. His eyes opened suddenly, and his eyes became an extremely dark shade of red and blood poured out of them. His body began to grow extremely tall, and gained a large amount of muscle mass as he lost all of his body fat. When it finished changing, the creature that was Max slowly stood up, and glared at the group. It simply screamed a loud, high pitched scream at the group as if to threaten them.

"What the hell happened to Max?" Barry asked, almost in tears from fear.

Martin as usual didn't bother to acknowledge Barry's question, and simply said "Now my boy, sick em."

The creature that was Max just nodded its head, and immediately launched itself at Barry, and tackled him to the ground. Then before Barry could react Max began to rip into his chest, ripping out his organs, and immediately reduced his life total to zero.

Everyone watched in horror as the beast ripped into the organs of the deceased carcass of Barry and started to devour them greedily. Justin shook his head and came to his senses as he aimed at the beast and tried to pull the trigger and kill it. However before he could Martin slapped the gun out of Justin's hands and knocked it to the ground. "Now now, little maggots don't get to fight back." Martin said and punched Justin in the stomach, in an attempt to wound him.

Justin however manged to avoid getting winded, and punched Martin in the face, knocking him back. Justin looked back at the group of 3 and shouted "Alright you three listen up, I am going to kill this Martin person, you three can take out that beast."

"A-are you sure you can do this? I mean you are the lowest leveled person here?" Jack asked shocked that Justin could even dream he was as strong as that Martin was.

Justin looked back at Jack and said "Don't you three worry about me. Remember Jack there is a reason I called myself technically a level 4." Justin turned back to Martin, who was staring at his hand for some reason. Justin knew what he had to do, he would have to try and lure this guy away first, but if he couldn't then he knew he would just have to give away his little secret.

Martin was staring at his hand, there was blood on it. Not just any blood however, it was his own blood. "Maggots, maggots don't deserve to make me bleed. I shall, no must wipe it off the face of the planet." Martin looked up at Justin, and rushed at him and tried to roundhouse kick him in the face, however Justin managed to block the hit with his arm, and pulled back.

After Justin blocked the hit he immediately turned around and began running away into the labyrinth of bookshelves as fast as he could. He turned his head to look behind him and saw the deranged, pale madman following him vigorously. "Predictable." Justin muttered as he maintained his speed, drawing Martin as far away from everyone else as possible.


	12. Chapter 12 - Martin v Justin

Justin managed to flee to a distance he thought was acceptably far from everyone else, not only that but he seemed to have lost Martin for a little and put a considerable distance between the two. Justin stopped and quickly glanced around the room. He was in some sort of empty room, that he could only presume was used for studying. The only real piece of furniture he saw in the room was a small desk, that has a rotating chair at it. Justin smiled and said "Perfect" and prepared the room for when Martin would enter.

Martin was running around wildly, trying his hardest to locate that maggot that dared cause damage to him. After a few minutes of running around madly, he finally found the pesky worm, sitting on a chair with his back turned. Martin ran up to the maggot and shouted "You, there you are!"

Justin heard Martin's angry shout, and when he was finished Justin turned the spinning chair to face him. Justin was smiling, and had his hands in the classical 'Mr Burns' style position. He maintained eye contact with the deranged, pale man as he put on a Russian accent and said "Well Mr Kenny, I have been expecting you." Justin was incredibly glad that he actually managed to pull that James Bond bad guy style confrontation off.

Martin glared at Justin and shouted "WHAT ARE YOU DOING YOU IMPOTENT LITTLE MAGGOT!?"

Justin smirked, his plan to annoy this guy was working perfectly and he was ready to push him to the edge. Justin looked up in the air and thought aloud "Hmmm, I find it ironic that someone who calls me a maggot that is unworthy of an actual response asks me questions and seems to expect an answer." Justin paused and stood up. He turned to the left and slowly walked around the room as he continued with "That makes me think that you Martin are not the higher individual you claim to be, and you are simply a maggot just like me." Justin turned to Martin as he finished that sentence and cracked hi knuckles. It was probably time for him to activate that power Anusana gave him. Justin flinched immediately when he realized that he didn't actually know how to activate that power of his, and that if he didn't fin out soon he would probably be dead.

Martin started panting psychotically and glared at Justin. He spat on the ground and growled "You insolent, insubordinate, worthless little maggot!" Martin smiled and began to giggle to himself, as weird black energy began to circulate and cover his body slightly.

Justin gulped, in his mind he was panicking afraid of dying in some disgusting way like he did a few days ago. Justin just started to focus on his forehead and muttered "Come on, turn on you useless bloody power." All of a sudden, as if it reacted to his command he felt his forehead start to burn just like it did when he used the power earlier against the Electric Moccasins. Justin smiled again and said "Right, now we are in business."

Martin stared at Justin in shock as he saw a purple spiral glow on his forehead. "W-what the..." Martin said as he saw Justin start to changed. He saw Justin hold his right arm out and grabbed his upper arm as large spikes of varying sizes popped out of his arm. Then approximately slightly less than half of his body was covered in some weird brown scales, which even covered half of his face. Not only that, but Justin's right eye was now yellow, with a small black dot in the middle, and his teeth were suddenly sharp and and pointy like a carnivorous beast's.

Justin shook put his left hand up to his head, and felt some sort of scaly surface. He looked over at a reflection in the mirror, and saw that half of his body seemed to be covered in weird scales and his face looked creepy. Justin gulped and said "Well this is a little weird. But kinda cool as well."

Martin stared at him and stuttered "W-well it seems that the l-little maggot isn't so much of a maggot after all. Tell me w-who blessed you."

Justin sighed and said "Well the fact that you call it a blessing means I have to destroy you. This is no blessing, it is simply a useful curse. Trust me when I don't need this thing anymore I will try my best to get rid of it."

Martin spat at Justin's face and said "Well, I thought you were a holy man but you are a self entitled brat that isn't worthy of the gift you have been given. So, I will personally destroy a dirty heathen like you." And lept forward and threw a punch at Justin.

Justin managed to block the hit by grabbing Martin's fist with his hand. He smiled and said "Gotcha." and forced new spikes to grow from his hand and stabbed into Martin's fist.

Martin smiled and said "I could say the same." and suddenly the black energy flooded out from his hand and seemed to somehow enter Justin's body.

Suddenly Justin felt like something was trying to rip him apart from the inside, it felt like his flesh was being separated from his bones, and his organs were being squeezed and shaken around. He screamed in agony as the black energy continued to flow into his body and started to destroy it from the inside. Justin tried to pull backwards, however the spikes that were lodged into the fist of Martin stopped him from pulling backwards.

Martin smiled and said "Well, I think you can tell this by now but my black energy is running through you body, and is tearing you in half from the inside. Not only that but you can't escape because of your own stupid power trapping us together. Its ironic you isn't it you dirty heathen."

Justin stopped trying to pull away and tried to focus. He needed to come up with a different strategy. He remembered that last time his spikes dropped off his body when he deactivated his power. So he focused on his hand, and tried to command the spikes to fall off. "_Drop off you fuckers._" Justin thought in his mind, and suddenly the spikes from his hand seemed to fall out of his body, allowing Justin to pull back and fall onto the floor. Justin slowly and gingerly picked himself back up onto his feet and said "Shit, my body feels like it wants to give up."

Martin smiled like a madman as he slowly pulled the spikes out of his hand and said "Well it looks like you broke free of my little trap congratulations you heretic."

Justin was panting heavily whilst bent over with his hand on his knees. He decided he wouldn't bother expending any energy to talk whilst he planned what he was going to do next. He knew there was something he could do in order to kill this thing. He suddenly realized that his power was activating to any commands he gave it, which he knew he could use to his advantage. He glanced up at Martin and saw him pulling the spikes out of his hand, they hadn't disintegrated into nothingness. He looked over at his shoulder and saw that the largest spike was about 55cms in length, it was a decent enough size for what he wanted. Justin muttered, "Drop." as he focused on his shoulder spikes.

Martin finished puling the spikes out of his hand, and looked at Justin to see him charging with some sort of weapon in his hand. Martin quickly jumped out of the way and looked back at Justin to see that he had a sword made from one of his spikes from his shoulder. Martin glared at him and said "You're a crafty little heretic ain't you?"

Justin shook his head and said "I don't understand why you are talking to me. I don't acknowledge maggots like you."

Martin growled at him and said "YOU ARE DOING NOTHING BUT MAKING YOU DEATH ALL THE MORE PAINFUL YOU KNOW!" Martin proceeded to lunge at Justin. Justin however simply jumped out of the way, which caused Martin to hit himself against the wall. When he picked himself up, he looked around quickly to see that Justin had disappeared. "Where the hell did that runt run off to?" he asked as he frantically looked around.

Justin laughed and said "Above you moron." and he dropped down onto Martin and stabbed his spike sword through his body, skewering him right down the middle. Justin you see had taken the opportunity Martin presented him after he hit the wall to use those boots that cost him a percentage of his sanity, and climbed up the wall and hung himself from the roof and waited for the opportunity to jump down and strike.

Justin flinched a little as a large jet of blood hit his face, but that didn't bother him too much, because right now he was feeling so euphoric after he managed to kill that psycho. The rush he felt after killing people like this, the wave of pleasure that seemed to assault his mind every time he dropped someone's HP to zero, the soft warm and refreshing feel of blood on his face made him crave for more action. He wanted to kill again, and he knew just who he could kill.

Justin started to walk towards the group before he stopped himself, and regained control of his body. He sighed a little as the scales and spikes covering his body faded away, and his eye suddenly became normal again. He watched as the spike that was lodged through Martin Kennedy's body began to evaporate. "Well, that's something to keep note of." Justin said. He turned around and began to slowly walk back to where he left the group. "I need to learn to calm down after using that thing." Justin muttered as he entered the labyrinth of bookcases.


	13. Chapter 13 - Myucombe

Whilst Justin was busy running off and fighting Martin; Jack, Janet and Jeffery were simply gawking at the figure that Max had changed into, as it ripped into the stomach of Barry. "W-what the hell are we supposed to do now?" Jeffery shouted, obviously scared.

Janet gulped and very quickly whispered "T-there is nothing we can do. W-with Justin gone, Bruce and Jefferson dead and Barry turned into a zombie we have lost all of our weapon strength. I mean we are an Engineer, a Librarian and a Tobacconist which means we are practically dead."

Jack looked around quickly and opened his inventory, and pulled out his small American Colt m1911 pistol. He didn't have much skill with it, but he thought he might as well use it anyway. He looked at the other two and said "Well, we might as just fight, I mean we've got nothing to lose."

Jeffery glared at him and said "Piss off. I'm leaving. I ain't dying in here." and turned to run away.

"YOU IDIOT WE WON'T BE ABLE TO LEAVE UNTIL WE CLEAR THIS DUNGEON. HECK YOU SAID IT YOURSELF. WHICH MEANS KILLING THIS THING. SO RUNNING DOES NOTHING. BUT FINE, RUN OFF IF YOU WANT TO BE STUCK IN HERE FOREVER!" Jack shouted.

Jeffery turned back around and said "Aww shit man." and pulled out a baseball bat from his inventory. He looked over at the Max creature and said "Well, it doesn't seem to be reacting to us at all."

Janet at this point had pulled out a rather large wrench and said "Well, what are we going to do."

Jeffery smirked and said "Surprise it." and charged at it, with his bat in the air.

"No dammit don't do that!" Jack shouted, but he did it to late.

The second Jeffery got close to the Max monster, it turned as if it was expecting a charge and knocked him back with one of its thick, black arms and sent him flying against a wall.

"Dammit." Jack said as he opened fire on the monster, and Janet started to charge at the Max Monster.

The being that was once Max seemed to smile on its creepy, pincered face and snarled at Jack as pullets bounced off it. As it was staring at Jack, Janet rushed up to it and hit it over the head with her over-sized wrench, knocking him to the ground and he started to bash that creature max turned into as he lay on the ground. However the creature quickly jumped up and knocked Janet back like it did to Jack and she crashed straight through the circular pillar of curtains.

The creature that was formally max then moved its attention over towards Jack who was trying to reload his gun slowly, however thanks to his lack of any real experience with a gun he just fumbled around as he pathetically attempted to load the gun. The creature snarled and rushed up to Jack so that it was right in front of him.

Jack looked up after he successfully loaded his gun to see the behemoth glaring and snarling at him. Jack gulped and said "Shit." and he was hit backwards about 30 meters and landed against one of the bookshelves, knocking them over. Jack opened his eyes slowly and just looked on in horror as the creature slowly approached him. Jack tried to get up, but it seemed that the impact had shattered a lot of his bones so he was struggling to move properly. He could only look on hopelessly as he saw the monster slowly approach him.

Janet slowly sat up, and looked around. She was lying over some curtains where she had assumed there was a giant pillar but there was nothing except a knee high table that was bolted to the ground. Janet tried standing up, but she felt something weird underneath the curtains. "What the hell is that?" Janet asked as she slowly picked herself up off of the table and slipped off it. She turned around and slowly picked the curtains up and threw them away, to reveal a weird samurai style blade with a white blade with a black and red handle that had a large white ribbon wrapped around the handle that hung off of the sides of the sword. "What the hell?" she said as she looked at the blade intriguingly.

Jack gulped as the behemoth like monster slowly approached him. He had basically resigned himself to death as the monster approached him, but thanks to those cigarettes of his he had enough sanity remaining to know that this was still a video-game so he knew this was just going to be only temporarily painful.

At this point Jeffery was back up and ran up behind the Max monster, and hit him over the back of his head with his bat. However the monster acted as if it didn't feel any damage at all, and simply turned around and kicked him backwards. It then muttered something, in some deep, jumbled voice that Jack managed to interpret vaguely as "Wait...turn...you...next...meal." before it turned back and walked up to Jack until he was standing over him. Its long and white tongue poked out of its mouth and licked his lips, as if he was looking at something delicious. "I assume I look that delicious then huh?" Jack whispered. He looked up into the air, by now Justin was probably dead, so his stalling exercise was for nothing. Jack closed his eyes but suddenly opened them again when he heard a sudden scream.

Janet screamed, as she felt her mind literally being ripped in two as she held onto the weird white Japanese sword. She held her head with her right hand with the sword in her left hand as she was on her knees, practically lying on the ground. Suddenly some weird fiery aura popped up from the ground and surrounded Janet in a circle. The monster that was Max, Jeffery and Jack all looked at Janet shocked.

Justin was walking with his hands behind his head slowly "Fuck this maze!" Justin shouted as he reached the 5th dead end in a row. Justin suddenly heard a high pitched scream of pain to his left. He started running towards the sound and rapidly repeated the phrase "Crap crap crap crap crap." and began to prepare himself to use his powers once more.

Janet suddenly stopped screaming as the pain dulled in her head. Suddenly the aura that was around her suddenly disappeared. Janet slowly stood up and looked over at the monster that was formerly Max. She pointed her sword at him and slowly and angrily said "I am going to destroy you."

"What the heck?" Jeffery asked as he gawked at Janet. She used to look incredibly timid, but suddenly she looked determined, serious and even worryingly intimating. Jeffery looked at that sword, and immediately noticed why she had that sudden change. "T-that's impossible. T-that weapon I-I mean..." He trailed off as he fell backwards onto his ass. He smiled and giggled a little as he whispered "So, we might be alright after all."

The monster had lost all of its attention on Jeffery and had turned around so that it was facing Janet. It growled, extended some large claws from its fingertips and charged at Janet, ready to rip it in half.

Janet simply smirked and said "Whatever." and suddenly a red fiery aura covered Janet's body head to to, as if she was encased in some sort of brilliant and bright fire. She also lept at the beast at some amazingly fast speed, and cut the monster in half exactly down the middle. Unlike in those stereotypical movies, the monster fell apart immediately and fell to the ground. The halves of the monster immediately dissolved into a black liquid. Janet landed on the ground, sighed and said "Well, that was boring." and immediately put the sword back into her inventory, which caused the fire over her body to immediately stop, and her appearance returned to that of the timid looking black haired lady's.

Jack and Jeffery just looked at Janet in shock, unable to actually say anything. The awkward silence between the three didn't actually end until Justin came rushing out of the maze, panting heavily with his gun drawn. He quickly looked around and asked "Well, what the hell just happened?"

Janet looked at him and said "I killed it with my precious little sword, Myucombe."

Justin just looked at her skeptically and said "Well, you have a name for a sword... that's healthy."

...

"Awwwwww, I expected my little Justin was going to get that sword." Anusana cried out like a small child.

Thebsil smirked and said "Well well, you see I am the one who created that sword remember, it will get to him somehow."

Anusana smiled and said "I hope you're right, remember you are the one who promised you would give him that if he killed that servant of yours. Sorry about that by the way."

"Oh no that's fine." the shadowy figure said "He was annoying anyway."


	14. Chapter 14 - Janet

Justin, Jack and Jeffery were all sitting close together, gawking at Janet. She was sitting away from the other three, with her back turned to them with her sword out in front of her. She seemed to be muttering about something as she stared at the samurai style sword, seemingly transfixed on it. The sight of seeing a tall and attractive looking women mutter at a sword was rather peculiar. Jack gulped and whispered to the others "So is it just me or is she talking to that sword?"

"Yeah, seems like it." Justin replied quietly so that Janet couldn't hear, and as he spoke he retained constant watch over her. "Anyway what the hell happened?"

Jeffery looked up in the air as he whispered "I don't really know. I was going to die and then suddenly she had a sword and suddenly that thing was dead." He paused, turned to look at Justin and asked "I am more curious as to how you killed that Martian psychopath actually. I mean he seemed to be instantly strong and fast."

Justin continued to stare at Janet as he whispered "Oh you know, that guy wasn't particularly bright. So I just outsmarted him, it wasn't too hard." Justin was lying through his teeth, because not only did he know that he couldn't tell the truth, but even if he did they probably wouldn't believe that he had spike powers.

Jack spoke up and asked "So, what are we gonna do about her?"

Justin reached into his breast pocket and pulled out another cigarette and lit it up quickly. He took a deep drag of the cigarette and slowly exhaled smoke. "Well, I am guessing because she has refused to smoke and has grabbed a sword that I assume is magical that she is running extremely low on sanity. This means that we probably need to get her sane before she attacks us or tries to kill herself. So I guess I will try to get her to smoke again." Justin explained

Jack and Jeffery both took pulled out and lit a smoke after Justin did, and Jack said "Ok, just try not to piss her off or something."

Justin nodded and slowly stood up. He slowly and cautiously walked through the open space of the library, making sure that he was walking softly and was constantly looking around at his surroundings just in case something else was sneaking up on the group. Once he got within 2 meters of Janet, who was still muttering to that sword, he pulled out a smoke and timidly said "Ummmmm Janet..."

Janet heard Justin talk and she turned around quickly, with her sword hidden behind her back. She looked at him suspiciously and asked "Well, what do you want?" in a very curtly manner.

Justin quickly glanced back at Jack and Jeffery before he said "Ummmm, me and the other guys think that you should probably have a cigarette. You seem to be on edge." Justin looked around the room, trying not to make eye contact with the angry stare Janet was giving him as he spoke.

Janet just stared at him for a brief moment as if she was thinking about something before she said "Nope. I don't need those dirty white sticks. All I need is my Myucombe." and with that she turned around and started muttering something again to it.

Justin looked at the sword, it didn't seem that special apart from having a rather cool colour scheme. Justin wanted to keep trying to argue with her, but assumed it would be in vain so he just took a strategic retreat and returned to his group. Once he got the them he fell on his ass and put the cigarette back into his breast pocket. "Well that was pointless." he said. He turned to look at Jeffery and asked "So, Jeffery you're a librarian do you know the story with that sword?"

He shrugged his shoulders and said "Well I honestly don't know too much, because not too much is known about it. What is known is that it is some sword made by one of the 5 generals, and unless you are blessed by them it basically destroys your sanity bar. And that's about all there is to know."

Justin groaned, whenever the five generals were mentioned he remembered the disgusting image of that pale girl with the cracked skin and the hair that seemed to be made of blood. "Well, how do we get out again?"

"I swear to god I have told all of you twice already, but I think we have to destroy every monster on the floor. Which means that we are gonna have to kill that spider thingy from earlier more than likely." Jeffery explained.

Justin sighed, stood and said "Well, then lets just get going. I will go and try to coerce Janet into coming along."

Justin started to walk towards her when he felt a hand on his shoulder, and he turned to see Jeffery pulling him back. "Don't worry, I will talk to her this time." he said and started to walk over towards Janet.

Justin nodded and muttered "Whatever." before he pulled his handgun from his pocket.

Jack stood up and walked next to Justin, and the two watched Jeffery talk to a skeptical and angry looking Janet. They couldn't hear the two since Jeffery seemed to be whispering for some reason so Jack looked over at Justin and asked "What do you think he is saying?"

Justin shrugged his shoulders and said "I don't know, why do you ask?"

Jack coughed before saying "Well its just that for a librarian that seems to know almost everything guy seems pretty damn thick."

Justin nodded in agreement whilst he watched the scene. Janet was suddenly standing up, with that sword in her hand.

"Well looks like he convinced her to help somehow." Jack commented.

Without looking away from the conversation Justin nodded and said "Yeah I guess..." However his sentence was cut of mid way with Jeffery's screams of pain. Justin and Jack watched on in horror as Janet randomly cut off Jeffery's right leg, causing him to collapse and scream loudly.

Janet looked up and began glaring at Jack and Justin. She quickly jumped forward so that she was right in front of the two, which caused Justin and Jack to jump back quickly out of shock. She stared into Justin's eyes and she angrily shouted "So, you want to take my precious Myucombe do you?"

Justin sighed, he could only wonder what that idiotic librarian had said to her so that she was this angry. Justin pulled his cigarette out of his mouth and said "Look Janet, I don't know why you are like this, we don't want that sword of yours. You own it so I would never try to take it away from you."

Janet smiled, as if what Justin has said just calmed her down which caused both Jack and Justin to sigh in relief. However without warning she suddenly frowned again and immediately slicked her sword through Justin's shoulder, cutting it like it was butter and removing his arm completely.

Justin just looked at his arm for a second, not initially feeling any pain. However it suddenly hit him like a frieght train, which caused him to scream in agony and collapse, grasping at the spot where is right arm used to be. Justin fell face forward and felt himself being overwhelmed with pain. His brain sent messages to his right arm, however nothing occurred. Justin suddenly closed his eyes as he seemingly lost consciousness.

Janet looked down at the groaning, pale body of Justin and said "You don't understand. I don't own the sword, this sword owns me."

Jack just looked at Janet in shock and slowly started to walk backwards. He glanced over at Jeffery, he was unconscious. Then he glanced back over at Justin, and he seemed to be on the verge of being unconscious. However something on his forehead was glowing extremely brightly. It looked like some sort of weird purple spiral and he had no idea what it was. However he couldn't spend anytime focusing on it since Janet was now glaring at him. Jack continued to slowly walk backwards making sure he didn't break eye contact, because he assumed if he did he would also lose a limb.

Janet started to laugh and said "Well, looks like its just you and me right now isn't it?"

Jack gulped and pulled out his pistol once more, and started to fire rapidly at the Janet. Janet however simply blocked all of the bullets with her sword almost effortlessly, without breaking eye contact with Jack. Janet smirked and started to laugh and started to walk slowly over towards Jack.


	15. Chapter 15 - Sanity

Justin slowly opened his eyes, the pain he was currently feeling was almost unimaginable. Justin gritted his teeth and tried his hardest to stand up, however as he tried to use his right arm to pick himself up, he fell back down. Justin shook his head, and made a mental note that he couldn't use his right arm anymore. With this knowledge, Justin slowly picked himself off of the ground using only his right arm. He groggily looked up at the room, and saw that Janet was slowly walking over towards Jack, who was cowering away in a corner. Justin tried to walk over towards the two, but he felt a large, powerful stabbing pain whenever he took a step forward which caused him to cry out and fall on his knees.

Janet quickly looked behind her as she heard Justin cry out, and was shocked when she saw that Justin was somehow still standing, albeit struggling to. "You want more you wannabe thief."

"You literally make no sense." Jack muttered, taking advantage of the current situation by walking away quickly.

Justin slowly raised his head to look up at Janet and glared at her with hate in his eyes. Justin's forehead spiral then began to glow bright purple. He didn't care if Jack or Jeffery saw his power, the only thought that was going through his mind was how he would kill that bitch. He felt his body change, first he felt his right leg get covered in scales and it slowly spread upwards from there, quickly covering the right half of his torso and his head, changing his right eye's colour to a bright shade of yellow. Then he suddenly felt a tingly sensation where his right arm would be, which caused him to look where his arm once was. He gasped in horror as he saw the scales slowly start to grow out of his torso and saw the scales start to form the shape of an arm. After about a minute the scales had completely formed into a new arm. He moved his arm up, so that it was in front of his eyes and slowly moved it. He twitched all of his finger individually, and quickly deduced that this arm, whilst made of scales was completely functional.

Jack stopped walking backwards and gawked at Justin as he saw him transform into some hideous, scale like creature and regrow a scaly arm, that seemed to be almost a shape based replica of his old arm. Jack gulped and said "What the fuck are you Justin?"

Janet just glared at Justin, her facial expression refusing to alter in the slightest.

Justin closed his hand into the shape of a fist, and dropped it to his sides. He didn't know if this hand was going to be permanent, or just a temporary thing but he didn't care at the moment, the only thought that was going through his head involved destroying the girl with the sword. He focused on his new arm as large spikes grew out of it, and he ripped one of them off his arm, to use it as a sword. Justin glared at Janet as he said "You know...I'm going to rip off both those pretty little arms of you." Unlike usual, Justin's voice seemed to echo for some reason, as if it was that of a stereotypical demon's.

Janet nodded, as weird fire covered her body from head to toe and she jumped high into the air and rushed over to Justin, and tried to cut him in half. However Justin blocked this swing with his spike based sword, and the two stood there with there swords locked, both trying to overpower each other. After a short stalemate both Justin and Janet decided to both simultaneously jump backwards. Then they both ran up to each other and they started exchanging sword swings with one another.

Jack just stood there, gawking at this exchange with an idiotic look on his face. He had no idea what exactly was going on. Then from the corner of his eye he saw that a body was shaking and moving a little on the ground, who he quickly recognized as Jeffery. Jack quickly rushed over towards the body, and started to try and help Jeffery recover somehow.

Janet looked over to her left, and noticed that Jack and Jeffery were extremely close to one another, making them prime targets for her. Janet quickly blocked a sword swing from Justin, and jumped left so that she was standing next right next to the two. She pointed her sword, so that it was about one centimeter away from Jack's face and said "Well well, it seems me and my little sword have you at a stalemate, don't we?"

Justin smiled and with his echoing, hoarse sounding voice asked "How so?"

"I have your friends you moron. And if you come close to me I'm going to cut them to ribbons." Janet said, talking rather quickly.

"You think I give a damn about those things?" Justin shouted "Go ahead and kill them." and he started to slowly walk up to her.

Jack looked up at Keith and started asked "Wait what?" just shocked that Keith didn't seem to give a damn about them.

Janet didn't react immediately, she just shook a little as she looked at Jack's whimpering and pathetic looking face. She pointed her sword at him, and just looked at him, seemingly debating in her mind as to whether or not killing people was the right idea.

Justin smiled a devilish grin as he walked up to the contemplating Janet with his spiky sword in hand. "Come on then you weakling. What sort of disgusting and weak willed women is ok with disembodying limbs but not murdering people?" Justin shouted, taunting Janet with his rather creepy voice.

Janet continued to stare at Jack, trying her best to ignore Justin. She heard the voice telling her... no commanding her to strike the idiot down. But no matter how much Janet wanted to follow its instructions, her body refused to do it, since her sanity was so low that her mind could no longer remember that this was a VRMMO. She started to tear up as the voice commanded her to once more shove the sword through his throat. Janet shook her head and muttered "I'm sorry... I can't." The voice proceeded to scold her, calling Janet worthless and disgusting, and Janet could only wallow in self pity as she accepted these insults.

Justin smirked as he heard Janet give up. Her guard was now lowered, so he proceeded to start running towards her and using his shoulder he knocked her down, causing her to squeal and drop the sword that she seemed to cherish so much. Justin smiled deviously as he picked the sword up, and gasped as he suddenly heard a soothing, relaxing, distinctly feminine and somewhat hypnotic voice start talking to him. "_You... you seem worthy. You must finish what your predecessor started and chop them all down for me._" Justin grunted and muttered "Piss off lady." before he threw the sword to the ground. Justin sighed, and tried his hardest to calm the lust for blood in his mind down before his forehead spiral started to glow and his body seemed to revert back to normal. However, Justin's hand didn't disappear, and was the same mess of dark, black spikes and scales that it was when it first formed. He gulped as he moved it in front of him and he said "Well, this is going to be hard to hide." Justin suddenly glanced in front of him as he heard sobbing, and saw Janet hunched over crying. He pulled his cigarettes out of his pocket and lit on up, as he started to approach her.

Janet just sobbed and muttered to herself as she lay on the floor. She didn't want to get up, she was just completely unworthy of anything. She heard footsteps approach her, which she immediately assumed was Justin's, approaching to kill her. She kept her eyes closed as she felt a hand grab her hair and pull her up. She grimaced in pain as she was pulled upwards, but she kept her eyes closed ready to accept her fate. Suddenly though she felt something force its way into her mouth. It was very thin, and had a similar feeling to paper, and when she breathed in she felt smoke enter her lungs, causing her to cough loudly. She opened her eyes to see Justin standing above her with a cigarette in his mouth, and noticed that he had put one in hers. "W-what?" Janet stuttered as she stared at his right arm.

"Smoke it, get your sanity to a stable level and stop listening to that stupid voice." Justin said before he threw a packet of smokes at her and began walking off to Jack. Once he got to Jack he handed a cigarette to him and said "Sorry about that, this is a little weird."

Jack reluctantly took the smoke as he stared at Keith's weird arm and said "Yeah you could say that."

"Anyway, how is he doing?" Justin asked, and the two started to tend to Jeffery, who was still missing his leg and was unconscious.

Janet smoked and watched Justin as she could feel her sanity return to normal. She didn't like the fact that she was smoking since they disgusted her in real life, but it was better than the alternative. Once she felt she was back to her usual self, she put the pack of smokes into her pocket and walked back over to the sword and put it in her inventory. Janet then slowly and stealthily creeped over to the tram room, she was going to put an end to this stupid thing herself.


	16. Chapter 16 - The Nightmare Concludes

Justin was looking at his right arm as he slowly wound a large bandage around it, in order to cover it completely. This way Justin knew everyone would assume that his arm was simply burned or something, and wasn't made out of some weird, creepy, demonic scales granted unto him by some demon lady. Justin glanced back over at Jack and Jeffery, they were both sitting on the ground with their eyes closed. Over the last hour, Jack and Justin had somehow managed to stitch the large flesh wound together and halt Jeffery's bleeding. Thankfully for him this game contained expensive, limb regenerating crystals that would restore his leg perfectly. Justin looked up and groaned, the fact that they were still trapped in here meant that there was still something they had to do before they were allowed to leave. He stood up and announced with dread in his voice "Well, I need to go look around for a way to get out of here."

"C-can't we just log out?" Jack whimpered

"Y-you can't. I-it won't let you." Jeffery stuttered, obviously still in shock and pain from losing his leg.

"What do you mean?" Jack asked as he opened his inventory, and gasped as he saw that the log off option was unavailable. "A-re we stuck on here now?" Jack asked.

"Only until we... we beat this place." Jeffery stuttered out.

Justin cracked his knuckles, he had a decent idea of what had to be killed anyway. He went to walk away when suddenly everything started to glow bright white, as if there was suddenly a radiant sun in the room. The white light was so intense it was blinding, so the three couldn't help but close their eyes and cover their hands over them.

After about half a minute, a high pitch, distorted and horrible sounding voice said "Open those eyes mortal."

Justin opened his eyes to see a white void with Jeffery and Jack suddenly gone, however Janet was now standing there simply staring at the ground frowning. She seemed to be covered in some foul smelling black liquid "So you killed the first spider creature?" Justin asked.

Janet didn't really respond, she just continued to look at the floor.

Suddenly the same horrible voice piped up and said "Good mortals. You have passed our test, you deserve to be blessed with your presence." Then two figures suddenly appeared in front of them and Justin saw the pale figure he recognized as Anusana and another female humanoid figure who was even more horrifying. This thing had short thick hair, that seemed to be made completely of some glowing, green moss and its eyes seemed to be slowly dripping out some sort of weird purple liquid, however its skin was its most notable feature. Its skin had a green shade to it, and was covered with flesh wounds, and had pieces of skin that just seemed to be hanging off her body by a thread. She looked like the skin she was wearing wasn't hers, and was someone else's that she had simply stole and put over her body. Not wanting to use cliches but she looked like a particularly horrifying Zombie.

Justin gasped at the sight of this new creature, but he shook his head and calmed himself down. He assumed that this figure was another one of those 5 generals or whatever. Justin suddenly heard a strange coughing noise, and turned to see Janet vomiting on the ground, it was obviously too disgusting a sight for her to bear, and Justin agreed, and he looked away as to avoid embarrassing Janet. Justin sighed and spoke up and said "Well, can we just fucking go now?"

"Oh hello there little pet." Anusana said, smiling and waving at Justin whilst completely ignoring his question.

"I'm not your pet." Justin muttered.

"Oh, and hes delusional too." The second creature said, looking at Anusana.

Anusana smiled and nodded as she said "Yeap, so you know why he is gonna be one of my little pet projects now, Thebsil."

Thebsil smiled and nodded. She had to admit is was fun watching this guy struggling to fight his lust for blood in order to save those petty relationships of his.

Justin stared at the two grotesque humans, he hated being spoken about in the third person right in front of his face. and he hated the fact that they were speaking as if he was some sort of animal, or object.

Suddenly Janet piped up and asked "H-hey what the hell is going on?"

Thebsil suddenly glanced over at Janet and glared at her with her husks for eyes as she shouted "SHUT UP SWINE, YOU SPEAK WHEN YOU ARE SPOKEN TO!"

Janet whimpered, and jumped back. She almost whimpered 'Yes Maam' but managed to stop herself just in time, and quickly regain her composure.

Justin looked over at Janet and explained "Basically those two hideous, vile creatures are two of the five Generals of Cthulhu and they are the ones who set up this test. Not only that but that one with the bleeding hair gave me the spike powers, and if I were to guess the creepy skinned one is basically the creator of that pretty white sword in your hand, and that's all I know." Justin then turned to Anusana and Thebsil as he asked "So, why have I been cursed with your horrible presence?"

"My my you're a brave little one aren't you?" Thebsil said, giggling to herself. "You know if you were my slave I would rip of that left arm for insubordination like that."

"But I'm not your slave. I am not even Anusana's slave. I am no ones slave." Justin said trying to sound defiant.

Janet looked over at Justin, she couldn't even stand to look at those two creatures, yet there he was arguing and glaring at them. Janet gulped, she didn't want to be here at all. In fear she slowly reached down to her belt and grabbed her sword's handle with her right hand. She was shaking as she pulled out the sword a from its sheath a little, she didn't know what she was doing or why she was doing it, but she didn't stop herself. Suddenly however she felt a hard push against her that launched her backwards about 10 meters, knocking her to the ground.

Anusana stood there with her palm out in front of her face. She glared at the crumbling body of Janet, who was just shaking on the ground. "I saw that you insolent swine. Don't you dare draw you sword against your betters!" Anusana commanded in her echoed, devil sounding voice.

"Hey hey what the hell was that for?" Justin asked.

"She drew that sword against us." Anusana explained calmly as she lowered her arm.

"You could have bound her still like you did against me." Justin said rather angrily.

"But that wouldn't involve her being punished for her insolence. You need to see it from my perspective my pet." Anusana said calmly, smiling deviously.

Justin scoffed and said "Piss off." and his forehead started to glow. However before he could do anything else he felt a huge impact on his temple, like a truck had rammed him which knocked him to the ground and rendered him semi-conscious.

Thebsil cracked her knuckles together after punching Justin in the face. She spat some purple saliva on Justin as she said "Pets like you don't get to attack their masters." She said angrily.

Justin looked up as he lay on the ground and groaned, he couldn't understand how someone like Thebsil who looked so weak seemed to be able to move so fast, and hit like a truck so easily. He started to pick himself up to his feet slowly, before he felt another impact on his chest, knocking him backwards as he heard the audible crack of his ribs breaking.

Thebsil smiled and said "Damn, you have fight in you don't you doggy." before she put her foot on top of Justin's body, and started to stand on him as he screamed in pain. Suddenly however Thebsil was pulled off of Justin, and put in a choke hold by Anusana. "W-what are you doing?" Thebsil asked as she struggled to break free.

"I want to thank you for punishing my pet, however if you lay another finger on it I will crush you. I don't want his spirit broken ok." Anusana slowly whispered into Thebsil's ear menacingly. Thebsil didn't say anything, she just nodded and was immediately released from the choke hold. Anusana then turned around and said "Well, I was going to reward you two underlings, but for your insolence you get nothing. Now all of you will leave now." and as she said that she clicked her fingers.

Justin opened his eyes suddenly, he was on a tram and the lights were blinking rapidly to show that they were going through a tunnel. He looked around to see that the tram was full of NPCs except for Janet, Jack and Jeffery all looking around as well as if they were shocked by their surroundings. Justin sighed as the Tram stopped at the Park, his stop and the stop before they were teleported away. He got up and walked off the tram without saying a word as he lit up a cigarette. Suddenly he stopped as he heard a voice call out "Hey Justin."

Justin turned around to see Janet, with her sword drawn staring at him. "What?" he asked.

"I am going to kill them, and anything that is related to them." Janet said angrily

"Them?" Justin asked

"The idiotic demons generals or whatever they are called." Janet explained

Justin shrugged his shoulders and said "Whatever." and started to walk away. He had no idea why she bothered to tell him her new-found, asinine goal.

"But - you are..." Janet said before she realized that Justin wouldn't turn around again. She shook her head, no matter how much he may deny it, Justin is basically one of those demons. But she guessed she would let him live for now. She turned around, and started to walk away slowly as she thought about how she was going to kill those two.


	17. Chapter 17 - Daydreaming

Justin slowly looked around as he smiled deviously to himself. He was sitting down on the ground whilst transformed and surrounded by bodies. He slowly stood up as he gazed at the view of the mountainous peak he was situated atop of. He held his arms out as he felt a strong gust of wind suddenly pick up, as if it was trying to push him down, but he earned this spot. Here, Justin was King.

Suddenly he heard a loud thump which caused him to jump. He rapidly looked around as he heard another one echo out. However Justin failed to spot their origin, even after they began to increase in their loudness and frequency. Justin turned around once more, and gasped as he saw the giant thing walking towards him. Its face seemed to be very octopus like, as it had numerous tentacles sprouting from it, however the rest of its body seemed to be very humanoid in shape. The scariest thing bout this creature however was its sheer size, Justin was up on some incredibly tall mountain, and thing thing towered over it. Justin saw its large, green eyes stare at him and he heard a deep, ominous voice whisper "Justin. Justin." Justin shook his head as he slowly stepped backwards refusing to break eye contact from the behemoth. He wanted to scream, but he couldn't find his voice. All he could do was watch as the creature slowly but surely approached him and...SLAP!

Justin suddenly felt a hard and powerful stinging sensation on his cheek. He shook his head and blinked has he rubbed his cheek, he was sitting on a couch in a generic looking modern clothes shop called Y-seam or something similarly pretentious. He could hear someone on the shops speaker system banging drums to the same rhythm that the banging in his little daydream was occurring. He looked up to see Tori, his girlfriend with her arms crossed and a frown on her face. Tori (Tori is short for Victoria) was a relatively plain women, she had untidy and medium length blonde hair, green eyes and rather fair and slightly freckled skin. She was only 5 foot 5 in height, and she was slightly chubby in stature and had a face that could only be described as average. Justin however did not mind her looks, considering he was no superstar in the looks department himself, and he wasn't the shallow type who dated people just for their appearance anyway. "Wha-" Justin said sleepily.

Tori slapped him once more and said "Wake up Justin, what the hell is wrong with you?"

Justin shook his head as he suddenly became alert once more and said "Oh no its nothing, I'm just a little tired. I spent too long on that VRMMO last night."

Tori scoffed and said "I don't understand how people can enjoy VRMMOs, what is so wrong with the good old controller and television screen?"

Justin smirked "Look, just because you get sick wearing Amusphere doesn't mean everyone else shouldn't use them." he teased.

"Whatever." Tori pouted. Then she paused for a moment before asking "So, what do you think?" she asked before moving her hands behind her back.

Justin was confused as to what she meant for a brief moment, until he remembered why they were in this stupid clothes shop. Justin glanced up and down at Tori, the was wearing a nice looking, but loose fitting red dress. Its modesty actually suited Tori quite well, so Justin just shrugged and said "Yeah it looks alright. I'd buy it."

Tori smiled and nodded. "Ok then, well just wait here for me to change." Tori said before she turned to the changing rooms.

When Tori left, Justin looked up at the roof and sighed. Justin was worried about these daydreams of his, they started 2 months ago, and have been exponentially increasing in frequency and length as time has gone on. Justin couldn't help but worry about that, especially with university about to rear its ugly head once more. Justin shrugged, and just figured that they will probably stop after about a week away from the game. As he was thinking about his daydreams he heard the changing room door open, and turned to see Tori exiting the both. Justin stood up and walked up to her at the counter as the two purchased the dress. "Well, I picked that shop so where do you want to go?" Tori asked.

Justin shrugged his shoulders and said "I don't know, I don't really go shopping much to be honest."

"Just pick something and stop being so damn indecisive!" Tori commanded.

Justin nodded and said "Fine whatever, lets just go into GameStart or something." before the two began walking in a seemingly random direction. If Justin was being completely honest he didn't want to go to any more shops here, he really just couldn't wait to get back home. He had a lot of stuff planned for today in 'The Whispers in the Darkness' and was worried if he was going to be able to do them at this rate.

...

It had been approximately 2 and a half months since the events of the Tram paradox scenario Justin found himself in. Since then both Jeffery and Jack have quit the game, with Jeffery giving up because he didn't want to continue with only one leg and Jack suddenly disappeared a week ago. Similarly, Justin hadn't actually seen Janet since then either, but he was rather glad about that because he didn't want to hang around a girl that seemed to be constantly balancing on the edge of her sanity.

However more has changed in the game apart from the people Justin played with, thanks to the developers releasing updates almost fortnightly, mostly fixing bugs but with new features being introduced every now and then. The main change being that there is apparently now a benevolent god now, and that it is in charge of some faction of knights to dethrone the five generals of Cthulhu. Justin didn't really care about this change too much and decided that he would just avoid the whole conflict as much as possible. However ever since it was introduced Anusana has stopped talking to him randomly, so that did make Justin happy.

...

After spending a large portion of the day with Tori, Justin was walking up the stairs to his third floor flat room at his College. once he got to his floor he opened the door, and was greeted by Steve (a slightly overweight man who seemed to always be watching the dorm communal tv) who was parked in his usual spot on the coach in front of the television. He glanced over at Justin before he turned back to the screen and said "Hey."

Justin nodded and said "Hey" as he slightly raised his arm so that it vaguely mimicked a hand wave. This brief exchange basically summarized 90% off all of the interactions that occurred between the two. Justin walked over to his room, pulled his keys out of his pocket and unlocked his door. Once he entered his flat room he threw his bag onto his bed and yawned as he collapsed on his chair. He reached under his desk and opened his fridge and pulled a soft-drink out of it. he opened it up and greedily chugged down the unhealthy and sugary drink. He quickly finished it and threw it away into the bin. Justin stood up and cracked his knuckles, it was definitely time to get back into the game, he had a job to do in it. Justin pushed his bag off of his bed, and grabbed his already plugged in Amusphere. He slipped it onto his head before he lay down onto the bed he had spent so much time in over the last few months. "Activate!" Justin commanded as his conscious was suddenly transported into the game world.

...

Justin blinked rapidly as his mind adjusted to being sent here. He looked around to see that he was now in the house style building he had refurbished. He looked over at his right hand, it was still bandaged completely, since it was still made completely out of those dark purple coloured scales. Justin sighed as he reached his left hand over and slowly unraveled the bandage off of his arm, revealing its true spiky purple form. Justin looked at his chest, and gulped when he noticed that the purple colour had spread, and was turning his right pectorals purple and scaly like his arm. "That's probably really bad." Justin said as he opened his inventory and pulled out a fresh roll of bandages and started to cover his right arm once again completely.

When he finished re-wrapping his arm he put his two hands into his trench-coats pocket, and started to slowly walk outside of his building.


	18. Chapter 18 - Trifling Hunt

Justin wearily looked around the spawn of 'The Whispers in the Darkness'. It was just as dark, depressing and disturbing as the rest of the terrain of the game. The ground was covered in knee high dead grass, the sky was an ominous purple colour and the surrounding buildings were so decrepit and destroyed that they were completely inhabitable. It was as if the buildings were from a lego set that was destroyed by a bored, small child. Now that he was more aware and was actively looking in the area, Justin noticed a lot of the finer details for the area. Immediately to the left there was a small and semi dried up riverbed with weird orange gems lining the its walls and only a small trail of white coloured liquid passing through it. Justin approached the stones and cautiously tapped one of them with his finger, and he felt a sudden short burst of intense pain as he quickly moved his finger back. He quickly reached into his breast pocket and pulled out his lighter and matches, and took a deep and relaxing puff of his cigarette. He put his matches and his lighter back into his pocket, and he began to slowly walk south.

Justin was regrettably walking south slowly, dragging his heels as he went. He was obviously not looking forward to this trip, and every time he tried to picture the face of that abomination that crushed him he would collapse in trauma and would begin hyperventilating. Justin looked around slowly as he walked deeper into the fog, closer and closer to the spot he was originally killed. Justin was only here for a job, an incredibly well paying job. He was contracted by someone called Barron, a level 56 soldier. Him and his younger brother, Hargreaves (a level 20 builder) apparently were stumbling around when they dropped a rare, special rifle which they could not find thanks to the insanely thick fog, so that's why they called Justin, a well established private investigator.

Justin threw his now finished cigarette onto the ground, and put his hands back into the pockets of his trench-coat. Justin quickly looked around as he heard a growl, and failed to find its origin and saw nothing other than the thick, grey fog. Unlike Justin's last venture through this terrain, he actually knew what he was doing. So he crouched a little and began to slowly and carefully walk through the dense, dead grass of the field like terrain. Justin heard something moving to his right, but when he darted his head to the right he saw nothing. Then again he heard another noise to the left, and then one more to his right. It was as if he was being surrounded by something invisible. Justin shook his head and calmed himself down, he knew that there was no way anything could have seen or spotted him here, so he knew he was safe.

Once Justin got thick enough into the fog, he opened the menu, and selected his class ability which allowed him to see through the fog easily, and highlighted all items, blood and recent footprints. Justin gasped when he saw numerous footprints, that seemed to be similar to an elephants. "I don't want to know what in the world could have made those things." Justin looked around quickly as he began to sneak around as quickly as possible whilst still being undetectable. Justin only had about 5 minutes of this vision, before he would have to wait another 24 hours to use this again, and the thought of walking back here tomorrow and spending more time in this god forsaken place wasn't exactly pleasing for him.

Justin began slowly but surely walking east, the soldier that contacted him said that the gun was dropped close to a group of three trees, that was slightly southeast of spawn. Justin made short effort of locating those aforementioned group of trees, and quickly ran up to them. These trees were on top of a rather small hill, and unlike most of the field, there was no grass on the ground at their bases. In fact apart from the dirt the only identifiable things were the elephant like footprints that seemed to be everywhere. After a brief scan of the area Justin quickly realized that the rifle was nowhere to be found. So in a panic he ran down the hill, and started to scout around the base of it, just to check if the rifle had rolled down the hill somehow. However, once this search failed, Justin could only swear and quickly look around in panic.

Time was quickly running out for Justin, he only had about 30 seconds left of his heightened vision before it was far too late. Justin shook his head and said "I am going to regret this" and started to follow the only discernible lead he had, and began sprinting, following the trail of the large footsteps. After his time had run out Justin crouched and started to slowly walk forward. He had already noticed that they were heading in a general pattern, so Justin started to follow that basic pattern to hopefully encounter that the thing that left them. As he was slowly walking, Justin suddenly was overcome with the urge to cough, but he had no idea why. SO he simply covered his mouth with his bandaged hand and coughed into it softly.

Justin glanced up as he heard someone loudly shout and scream about something. He shook his head and shuddered as he had flashbacks of that horrified looking girl, who put a gun to her own head and shot herself in her mind. Justin rejected those flashbacks, before he had another one of those horrible PTSD style reactions once more. Justin heard another shout and quickly ran forward to try and see what could have caused it.

After a what seemed like an eternity of running, Justin suddenly felt incredibly weak. He struggled to maintain standing as his pace slowed significantly, almost to a pathetic crawl. Justin suddenly felt incredibly ill, as if he had eaten something 5 days old, and he felt an uncontrollable urge to vomit. Justin began to stumble, walking in an uncoordinated and almost random fashion. After a few more seconds of this pathetic stumbling, he reached a large, dead and decaying white tree that had obviously shed its leaves a long time ago and collapsed. He vomited on the ground multiple times as he lay there, shaking in the fetal position. Justin could do nothing as he simply wondered what in the world happened to his body. He moved his right hand up to his face to see that there was suddenly blood all over his bandaged arm, where he had recently coughed into.

Justin suddenly had an idea, and he closed his eyes to desperately tried and activate the spiral on top of his forehead. However he found himself unable to focus, unable to do anything no matter how much he tried. Eventually he was struggling to keep his eyes open. He entered a sudden coughing fit as he coughed onto the ground, and seemingly liters of blood spewed out of his mouth and covered the base of the tree. The sight of Justin lying there and shaking would have been an awful site for any unfortunate enough to stumble across him.

Finally after what felt like hours of agonizing pain, Justin felt himself losing all consciousness, just as he heard the loud thud of huge footsteps approach him. Justin tried to shout at the large being he could hear approaching him, but could only faintly mutter "Geh...hdn" before he closed his eyes and fell into a unconscious haze.


	19. Chapter 19 - Trapped

Justin groggily opened his eyes to see he was in an incredibly dark place. His memory of the events prior to him falling unconscious was incredibly hazy, and all he really remembered was that he was looking for a gun, and he fell sick. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious for, it could have been minutes, hours or even days. Justin did take solace in the fact that his illnesses seemed to have more or less disappear. He tried to move, however he felt that his arms were being bound to his left and right, and suddenly he realized that he was in an upright position, and that every one of his limbs were tied tightly to something behind him. Justin pathetically tried to struggle against his bounds to break free, however it was to no avail, and he quickly conceded and stopped his struggles.

As Justin's eyes adjusted to the dimly lit place he noticed that he was in some sort of weird basement room. He then noticed other details about the grungy room he was in. The room itself was full of cages and glass displays, and all of them seemed to have a disgusting looking creatures inside of them that were violently thrashing around in a vain attempt to break free of their confines. Not only that but there were old looking wardrobes and cabinets that were full of little vials of various looking ingredients, and the room was filled with tables containing various beakers and flasks full of bubbling and suspicious looking liquids. It was like Justin was in a mad scientist's heaven. However the worst thing about the room was that there was a constant sound of dripping that seemed to resound through the entire basement room. Justin sighed, he knew that the dripping was going to drive him insane.

After half an hour of just hanging there, Justin wanted to scratch. He wanted to scratch an itch on his nose that would not go away. It was actually like torture for him being denied such a basic pleasure. Justin had never really believed in God or Jesus, and now his belief was shaken further since he refused to accept Jesus would be able to sit at that cross willingly without breaking free to scratch his itches. Justin pathetically tried to rub his nose against his left shoulder, however his neck just wouldn't twist that far, no matter how hard he tried. He wanted to groan and moan in agony, but he still had the common sense not to speak in case the thing that brought him hear heard him. Justin just slumped down and gave up after a few minutes of unsuccessful rubbing. He closed his eyes and desperately tried to think of something that wasn't his itchy nose. He scrunched up his face as the dripping continued, his early prediction about the dripping was unfortunately correct

After about 2 and a half hours of hanging there like a carcass on a hook at a butchers, Justin heard the distinct sounds of footsteps. He made sure that his eyes were closed and he looked as unconscious as possible. He hung there, frozen in fear as he heard the footsteps get closer and closer until he heard them stop right in front of him. Then there was a long pause, a pause that felt as if it would go on forever. The silent pause was only broken up by the sound of the tap dripping. After what seemed like an eternity the being in front of him finally spoke up and said in an extremely crackled and horrifying voice "Well well, it seems he is still asleep."

Justin remembered that voice, it was that horrifying creature Thebsil's voice. As he heard her slowly walk away he thought about how much he didn't want to see her. He hadn't even seen Anusana since the whole paradox room incident. He continued to play unconscious in the hopes that she would just go away or something before he heard her walk up to him again. Suddenly Justin felt a hand grab his chin and lifted his head up and before Justin could react poured some funky tasting liquid down his throat, which made him cough and splutter before he shouted "What the hell are you doing to me?"

Thebsil backed away and smirked as she said "Oh, you're awake then are you?"

Justin spat at her hideous, flesh-wound covered face and said "What did you do to me, where am I and why am I here."

Thebsil smiled and said "Well my little one, that was a little drug that did a lot of things, but for now it can say that you won't be able to access the powers that bitch gave you. As for where you are, you're in my little lab. Isn't it wonderful. Even idiotic meat sacs such as yourself can marvel at my collections." She paused and gestured over at the cages behind her that were full of those disgusting small creatures. Then she continued saying "And as for why you are here its a little something called revenge my dear slave."

"Revenge for what?" Justin asked.

"Huh, you sure are loyal to play so ignorant about your boss." Thebsil said whilst softly giggling "Well you ignorant fool, it seems that Anusana has decided for no reason out of spite to start killing my followers, by telling that insipid Holy Order group where my followers are hiding."

Justin frowned as he said "I have no idea about all of that, Anusana hasn't even spoken to me since the tram paradox. Anyway what the hell does this have to do with me?"

Thebsil smirked and walked back up to Justin. She started to stroke his chin with her cold, calloused hands as she explained "Awwww, your ignorance is beautiful. Well you see darling you may have had nothing to do with the attacks, but you are the only way I can get back at that red head bitch of a mistress of yours."

"Pfft" Justin said "You really think you can kill me or something and that will make that bitch sad? You really don't seem to know your friends do you?"

Thebsil laughed as she walked back to her cupboards. As she was rummaging through it she said "You think I am going to kill you my little flower? No no no. You are far more useful to me alive." Thebsil then pulled out a large needle with weird, purple bubbling liquid inside of it. As she walked up to Justin she smiled creepily as she said "Well, I am going to enjoy having you as my slave."

Justin saw the creepy smile, and the second she said '_SLAVE'_ he immediately new what she was planning to do. Justin started to struggle on his restraints once more, and started to pant madly. Justin then tried to activate the purple spiral on his forehead, however for some reason nothing was happening, no matter how hard he tried nothing was happening. As Thebsil got closer to him he said "Oh God please don't."

Thebsil smirked and said "I challenge you to say that again in an hour." Before she grabbed Justin's arm and shoved the huge needle into his arm and injected the liquid into him. Justin just screamed as he felt it being injected into his bloodstream. When the needle was empty, Thebsil threw it to the ground and said "Well well see you in an hour." before she walked off.

Justin looked up as Thebsil walked away. He wanted to shout something but suddenly felt and extreme wave of drowsiness hit him before he closed his eyes and fell asleep.


End file.
